Espresso is a subsidiary of Sharekhan. Sharekhan has complicated pricing but that of its subsidiary is straightforward. You will be charged 20 Rs brokerage for buy and sell orders if you have profited from the trade. In case you have suffered a loss, the brokerage on the sell order won’t be charged. Espresso has many interesting features. I have covered the same and my experience with each of them in the following paragraphs.
Watchlists
Espresso offers five custom and five premade watchlists – Nifty, Sensex, MIS Plus, EZ Option, and MIS. The custom lists are managed and updated by the user. The premade one already has some instruments. For example, the EZ Option list contains the index options arranged by their strike price. Above the list, there’s a dropdown list to choose the index type. It contains these indices – Nifty, Banknifty, and Finnifty. The Sharekhan subsidiary enables you to customize the EZ Option watchlist by letting users add/remove the instruments of the different expiry dates, select center strike prices, etc.
The Espresso watchlists section has a tab named “market movers”. This tab allows users to find the scrips whose prices have increased or decreased the most. The market movers section has a drop-down box that contains the following options – NSE, BSE, FUTURE, CALL, PUT. Besides the drop-down box, there’s another box with sub filters such as 52 week high/low, top traded turnover, top traded volume, etc. The application lets users hide the watchlist section.
Widgets
At the top of the Espresso dashboard and below the search box, you will find a row with spaces dedicated for scrips. You can call these spaces widget spaces. You can add any instrument to the spaces and track its price in real time. Users can add up to 7 widgets to the rows. The online broker enables you to hide the search box and the menu that appear above the widgets row.
Losses
Espresso won’t charge brokerage on sell orders of loss-making positions. If your position is a loss making one, you will be charged only for the buy order. This is the major difference between this broker and its counterparts that charge Rs 20 per order. The application allows users to filter the report data by the product type, exchange, and position. It lets you hide/remove the columns displayed in the reports section.
Charts
Like most online brokers of India, Espresso by Sharekhan is powered by TradingView. You can place an order directly from the chart. You can also see two or more charts side by side and check the market depth without switching to any other interface. Above the charts, you’ll a “reports” button. If you click this button, the application will show the “reports” section below the chart. This feature helps users to keep an eye on their positions. The broker offers every indicator available in the premium edition of TradingView.
Themes
Like some online brokers in India, Espresso supports two themes – light and dark. To change the interface color scheme, click the profile icon and then click on the option “Theme”.
Order types
Sharekhan Espresso supports these four order types – CNC, EMF, MIS, and MIS+. You may be familiar with the first three order types. MIS+ orders come with leverage benefit i.e. you can buy more quantities of scrips with less money. The application allows users to set the default order type for a segment. It also offers the widely used feature, the bracket order. Espresso supports the trailing stop loss feature as well.
Alerts
“Alert” is another useful feature offered by the Espresso web and mobile share trading application. If you can’t be in front of the screen during trading hours and would like to be notified when the price of scrip has reached a certain price, use this feature. When you create an alert, Espresso won’t simply trigger it. The application keeps the log of alerts so that you can check whether the alert system is working as per your expectations or not.
Free webinars
The broker organizes a free webinar for people eager to learn about the stock markets. The webinars cover advanced and basic concepts of trading and investing. They are held once a week, month or quarter.
Fund transfers and withdrawals
Espresso supports these two payment methods – UPI and net banking. The UPI mode of payment is free. If you use net banking, you will have to pay a small fee. The broker allows you to allocate funds for a particular segment. For example, if you have transferred 10000 Rs, you can allocate 7000 for equity and the remaining 3000 for the derivatives segment. Withdrawal of funds from the trading account is quick.
My experience with this broker
My experience with Espresso on PC has been great and decent on mobile phone. The orders are placed and positions are closed quickly on PC. A few months back, I created a position on desktop and went out. When I wanted to exit the position with the mobile app, I was not able to do so. I had to sign in to the website with the phone browser to exit the position.
