ICICI Launches Overseas Trading Service

If you have been fancying the idea of investing in blue chips like Nokia, Pepsi or Microsoft, here is your chance to buy US stocks by just logging on to ICICI Direct.com. ICICI Direct has become the first online broking portal to offer overseas trading to resident Indians. Investors can put their money in US listed stocks, ADRs, stock options and index options. Indian investors can however only trade in delivery-based trading. Individual investors can remit up to $2,00,000 annually. ICICI Securities, which has already signed up US based Penson Financial Services as its overseas trading partner is upbeat about this new overseas trading platform. But the only question perhaps is how eager Indian investors are to buy into the US stocks when overseas investors are lining up to invest in the Indian market. RBI recently increased the limit of foreign remittances from $1,00,000 to $2,00,000 and is expected to further liberalise the foreign outflow norms to make good use of huge forex reserves.