The earliest roots of the stock market can be traced back to the days when people conducted their trading activities under Banyan trees.

In 1854, Dalal Street came to prominence. The oldest stock Exchange in Asia, The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) came into existence. With over 150 years of functioning, BSE became the first stock exchange in the country to be granted permanent recognition under the Securities Contract Regulation Act, 1956.

The Indian stock market has witnessed tremendous changes over the past two decades. Gone are the days when the 'open outcry' method was used to trade shares. In this method, brokers came to the trading floors of stock exchanges and placed bids by shouting out prices . Once an agreement was reached to buy or sell shares, the settlement would take days. Even worse, if you were a long-term investor, it was your headache to preserve the shares certificates that came in paper form. The process underwent a rapid change with the advent of information technology. Paper share certificates gave way to the electronic form (dematerialised) and a screen-based trading system was introduced.

Thanks to these developments, now there is no risk of losing share certificates. Similarly, there is no need for brokers to assemble at a place to trade. An investor can call a broker and place his order. The broker would punch orders into his terminals, which are fed into a centralized system at the stock exchange. The transaction gets executed as soon as the order matches an existing order in the system. Otherwise, it waits for new orders before it can effect a match.

In 1993 the NSE or National Stock Exchange was recognized as a Stock Exchange in India. Today technology has helped automate the entire trading mechanism in India .

A Stock Exchange provides a platform to trade company stocks and other securities. A stock may be bought or sold only if it is listed on an exchange. Thus it is the meeting place of the stock buyers and sellers. The major stock exchanges in India are the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange and are regulated by SEBI.

An online trading account brings the benefits of online investing and can be rewarding if you have sufficient knowledge of the markets. First, it gives you the freedom to trade from any place if you have access to the Internet. Irrespective of whether you are at home or office, or on the move, you can always buy or sell securities using an e-broking account. You do not have to call your broker to place an order. Another advantage is the speed associated with investment using an online broking account. Let's assume that you are tracking a stock exchange's website during trading hours, and you find that the price of a particular stock has fallen to the level at which you wanted to buy it. If you use the traditional mode of broking, you will call up your broker and place an order. The process may take a while, and before your broker punches his order, the stock's price may have risen by a few percentage points.

You can track the performance of your stocks using the Smart Portfolio tool that we offer to our customers.

As a customer of HSBC InvestDirect, you can place different orders such as Market orders, Limit Orders, Stop Loss Orders, After Market Orders (AMOs), Normal Orders etc.

A limit order is an order to buy or sell a security at a specific price quoted by you. You could set the price of the stock. However, a limit order cannot guarantee execution of the trade, since the scrip might not reach the desired price on that particular trading day owing to Market related factors.

An After Market Order (AMO) is a feature using which a customer can place an order even after the close of regular trading hours. For more details, please visit our section on AMOs.

Technical analysis is a method of evaluating stocks by analyzing stock market related activity, such as past prices and volume. Technical analysts do not attempt to measure a security's intrinsic value, but instead use charts to identify patterns that can suggest future activity. They believe in the momentum that the scrips/markets gather over a period of time and cashing in on the same.

Fundamental analysis uses revenues, earnings, future growth, return on equity, profit margins and other data to determine a company's underlying value and potential for future growth