Broker Offers Sms Trade Plan
The Age
Thursday March 6, 2008
You can now buy and sell shares with an SMS. Online broker Bell Direct launched the service recently and says several clients quickly submitted "buy" or "sell" orders on their mobile phones.
Bell Direct chief operating officer Lee Muco said most people find it too hard to buy shares on the internet using their mobile phones (a process involving wireless application protocol, or WAP). But they were comfortable using SMS."We did some research and we can see that SMS is prevalent across all age groups," Mr Muco said. "It's one of the features of a phone that people of all ages can and do use."The service involves using a simple sequence of "buy" or "sell" followed by the quantity, stock code, price and a security PIN number.The company has aimed the SMS service at existing clients but also hopes to pick up new business."We do know that, in Asia, where mobile trading is very big, in South Korea and China there's millions and millions of clients using this kind of service," Mr Muco says."You can basically trade anywhere, whether you're in a meeting or in a movie."Mr Muco says the service costs 55 cents a message and then $15 a trade and was a point of difference in the online broking market. "I'd be extremely surprised if any of our competitors copied us," he said.CommSec managing director Matthew Comyn said his company introduced SMS price alerts in 2000 but has no plans to offer SMS trading.Industry surveys suggested people wanted a "richer experience" and enjoyed trading online where they could also get in-depth information about a company.Australian Shareholders Association chairman Ian Curry said it was an "inauspicious" time to launch SMS trading, considering the uncertainties in equity markets."Most of our members are long-term investors rather than traders or speculators, and they would generally use a broker, although quite a few of them will also use something like CommSec or E*Trade," Mr Curry said. -- VANESSA BURROW
© 2008 The Age
Share This