Q. What is an Equity Share?
A. An equity share represents the form of ownership. The holder of such a share is a member of the company and has voting rights.

Q. What returns can I expect from my investments in equity shares? What are the risks?
A. Equity shares are “High-Risk High-Return Investments.” The major distinction of Equity investment from all other investment avenues is that while the return from many avenues such as Bank Deposits,Small Saving schemes, Debentures, Bonds etc are fixed and certain, the earnings from equity investments are highly uncertain and varied. A good scrip picked up at the right time could fetch fairly good returns else the return may be meager or it may even turn negative, i.e. the invested fund itself may be eroded. In short, if the investment in fixed income category instruments is secured and risk-free to a large extent, investment in equities and related fields could be termed as risky.

Q. What is Dividend?
A. Dividend is the part of profit distributed by the company among its investors. It is usually declared as a percentage of the paid-up value or face value of the share.

Q. What is a Bonus Share?
A. A Share issued by companies to their shareholders free of cost by capitalization of accumulated reserves from the profits earned in the earlier years.

Q. What shares can I buy?
A. You can buy the shares that are listed on any of the recognized Stock Exchanges.

Q. Whom should I contact for my Stock Market related transactions?
A. To be able to buy or sell shares in the stock markets a client would need to be registered with a stock broker like SKP Securities Ltd who holds membership in stock exchanges and who is registered with SEBI.

Q. Am I required to sign any agreement with the broker or sub-broker?
A. Yes, you have to sign the “Member-Client agreement” for the purpose of engaging a broker to execute trades on your behalf from time to time and furnish details relating to yourself to enable the member to maintain Client Registration Form.

Q. What is a Member–Client Agreement form?
A. This form is an agreement entered into between client and broker in the presence of witnesses wherein the client agrees (is desirous) to trade/invest in the securities listed on the concerned Exchange through the broker after being satisfied of broker’s capabilities to deal in the same.

Q. What is Buying and Selling?
A. There are several types of orders that you can dictate to a broker. The most common type, which is a regular buy or sell order, is called a market order. Another type of order is a limit order wherein you ask the broker to trade only if the price reaches a specific level. In a stop order, you tell the broker to sell your shares if the price drops to a certain level to prevent significant loss because if it drops to that level it is likely to drop further and your losses are likely to increase.

Q. How do I place my orders?
A. Trading can be done via the phone or by coming in person to the office of SKP or through any other facility provided by SKP like Internet trading. The dealer (employee of SKP who is supposed to input the investors order into the stock exchange order system) after checking the authenticity of the person calling and after checking the margin available in the account would put/enter the order into the stock exchange system.

Q. What is meant by bullish and bearish trend?
A. When the market goes up it is called a bullish trend and when the market goes down it is called a bearish trend.

Q. What is taking a position?
A. When you act upon a stock and buy into it, you are taking a position. A position is an amount of money committed to an investment in anticipation of favorable price movements.

Q. What is an index?
A. An index is a stock-market indicator created as a statistical measure of the performance of an entire market or segment of a market based on a sample of securities from the market. An index is thus a means to evaluate the overall performance of a market or of a segment of the market. An index measures aggregate market movements.

Apart from being a general market indicator, indices are used as a benchmark to evaluate individual portfolio performance. Professional money managers will always try to outperform the market, i.e. they will always try to do better than the indices. For example, if the value of a portfolio moves up by 10% while the index moved up by only 5% then the portfolio is doing better than the market.

Q. What is Methodology of trades?
A. The market watch, i.e the screen kept open normally on the trade screen would show the following columns -
    1. Best bid price 2. Best bid quantity 3. Best offer price 4. Best offer quantity 5. Last traded price

The first 2 columns as given above show the available buyers for a particular share in the stock exchange and the next 2 columns show the available sellers, and the fifth column shows the price at which the last trade took place. Hence when a investor wants to buy a share at “market price” ideally the 3rd and the 4th column would depict how many shares one can get at a stipulated price. The client can also put a limit price order which would sit in the order book till it reaches a price time priority when the trade can be executed.

Q. What is a Contract Note?
Contract Note is a confirmation of trades done on a particular day on behalf of the client. It establishes a legally enforceable relationship between the client and SKP with respect to the settlement of the trades. The Contract Note would show settlement number, order number, trade number, time of trade, quantity and price of the trades, brokerage charged, etc and it would be signed by an authorised person of SKP.

Q. What is pay-in day and pay-out day?
Pay-in day is the day when the broker shall make payment or delivery of securities to the exchange. Pay-out day is the day when the exchange makes payment or delivery of securities to the broker.

Q. What is a depository?
A. A depository can be compared to a bank. A depository holds securities (like shares, debentures, bonds, Government Securities, units etc.) of investors in electronic form. Besides holding securities, a depository also provides services related to transactions in securities. There are two main depositories in India, namely, a) National Securities Depository Ltd. (NSDL) and b) Central Depository Securities Ltd. (CDSL), both of which are regulated by SEBI. SKP Securities Ltd is a Depository Participant of both CDSL / NSDL and will hold your securities in electronic form.

Q. What do you mean by ‘Market Trades’ and ‘Off Market Trades’?
A. Any trade settled through a clearing corporation is termed as a ‘Market Trade’. These trades are done through stock brokers on a stock exchange. ‘Off Market Trade’ is one which is settled directly between two parties without the involvement of a clearing corporation.

Q. How do I make or receive payments to or from SKP?
A. Payments to SKP has to be made via a Account Payee cheque/Demand Draft in favor of SKP Securities Ltd. The payment should necessarily come from the bank account of the investor and not from any other person. Similarly SKP would pay an Account Payee cheque in the name of the investor, which will also contain the Bank name and account number of the client.

Q. How long does it take to receive my money for a sale transaction and my shares for a buy transaction?
A. The pay-out of funds and securities to the clients by SKP will be within 24 hours of the pay-out.

Q. What is a Rolling Settlement?
A. In a Rolling Settlement trades executed during the day are settled based on the net obligations for the day. In NSE and BSE, the trades pertaining to the rolling settlement are settled on a T+2 day basis where T stands for the trade day. Hence trades executed on a Monday are typically settled on the following Wednesday (considering 2 working days from the trade day). The funds and securities pay-in and pay-out are carried out on T+2 day.

Q. What is an Auction?
A. The securities are put up for auction by the Exchange on account of non-delivery of securities by the selling trading member to ensure that the buying trading member receives the securities due to him. The non-delivery by the trading member could arise on account of short delivery. The Exchange purchases the requisite quantity in the Auction Market and gives them to the buying trading member.

Q. What happens if I could not make the payment of money or deliver shares on the pay-in day?
A. In case of purchase on your behalf, the member broker has the liberty to close out transactions by selling securities in case you fail to make full payment to the broker for the execution of contract before pay-in day as fixed by Stock Exchange for the concerned settlement period unless you already have an equivalent credit with the broker. The shortages in case of sales are met through auction process and the difference in price indicated in Contract Note and price received through auction is paid by member to the Exchange which is then liable to
be recovered from the client.

In both the cases any loss in transactions will be deductible from the margin money paid by client.

Q. What happens if the shares are not bought in the auction?
A. If the shares could not be bought in the auction i.e. if shares are not offered for sale in the auction, the transactions are closed out as per SEBI guidelines. The guidelines stipulate that “the close out price will be the highest price recorded in that scrip on the exchange in the settlement in which the concerned contract was entered into and upto the date of auction/close out OR 20% above the official closing price on the exchange on the day on which auction offers are called for, whichever is higher.”

Since in the rolling settlement the auction and the close out takes place during trading hours the reference price in the rolling settlement for close out procedures would be taken as the previous day’s closing price.

Q. What happens if I do not get my money or share on the due date?
A. In case a broker fails to deliver to you in time and make the proper payment of money/shares or you have a complaint against the conduct of the broker, you can file a complaint with the respective stock exchange. The exchange is required to resolve all complaints. To resolve the dispute the complainant can also resort to arbitration as provided on the reverse of Contract Note /Purchase or Sale Note. However, if the complaint is not addressed by the Stock Exchanges or is unduly delayed then the complaints along with supporting documents may be forwarded to Secondary Market Department of SEBI. Your complaint would be followed up with the exchanges for
expeditious redressal.

In case of a complaint against a sub-broker, for redressal the complaint may be forwarded to the concerned broker with whom the subbroker is affiliated.

Q. What are the additional charges other than brokerage that can be levied on the investor?
A. The trading member can charge:

Q. How are margins paid?
A. Exchange prescribes margin rules from time to time, which currently are calculated on the Value at Risk model. Margins are to be paid by the investor before placing the order.

Q. What are the rights of the investor?
A. The right to get -
Proof of price/brokerage charged, Money/shares on time, Statement of Accounts and Contract Note from trading member.

Q. What are the obligations of the investor?
A. The obligation to -
Sign a proper Member-Constituent Agreement
Possess a valid contract or purchase/sale note
Deliver securities & make payment on time
Provide Margin before trade

Q. What are the tax implications of investing in Indian equities?
A. Tax rates on investments gains are categorized as long term & short term capital gains.

(a) Long term capital gains Long Term investments that are held for more than 12 months are termed as long term capital assets. Profit on sale of such assets is termed as long term capital gain (LTCG) which as per the latest Budget notification will attract nil tax.

(b) Short term capital gains
Shares that are held for less than 12 months are classified as short term capital assets which as per the latest Budget notification will attract 10% tax.