When we started Zerodha, we consciously decided to charge an account opening fee for two reasons:

• There was no Aadhaar or eSign until 2016–17. Account opening was completely offline, which meant there was a cost involved. So we had to charge an account opening fee to cover the cost.
• We wanted to attract users who were serious because there’s an ongoing cost for every user we add.

But things have changed over the years with fully digital onboarding, etc., and we had to change our stance. A few months ago, we made account openings free for those under 25 to encourage them to start investing early. But now we are making it free for all resident Indians.

The tax filing deadline is just a week away. To file your taxes, you will need details of your trading or investing activities. You can easily download all the reports you need on Console.

To the one and only Karthik Rangappa 🙇

Here’s how Sensex has performed leading up to the budget and after the budget over a one month period.

If you need any help with term insurance, talk to Ditto advisors here.

Now, you can trade commodities using the same equity account balance without maintaining a separate commodity account. This was a legacy issue that took us a long time to address.

Zerodha Broking is our primary membership, and Zerodha Commodities Pvt Ltd is the commodity member. We have started allowing customers to move to Zerodha Broking even if they are trading commodities.

As part of this process, we are also surrendering the Zerodha Commodities Pvt Ltd license on exchanges where we weren’t active, i.e., the NSE. You can trade NSE commodities as well using the same equity account.

Since we are surrendering the commodity license under Zerodha Commodities Pvt Ltd, you would have seen a notice in the paper.

To learn more, check out our Support Portal here.

The Daily Brief podcast is our latest initiative, a new channel to cover all the latest developments in the markets—both public and private. Think of it as a news channel, but a little slower and better. The goal is to distil and decode the biggest developments in the markets.

We also put out a weekly wrap of the biggest stories we covered over the week for those who didn’t have time to catch up on everything happening in the business and finance world.

In this episode, we cover:

• Madness in thematic and sectoral mutual funds.
• RBI’s new guidelines on interest payments that could hurt banks and NBFCs.
• Uttar Pradesh makes hybrid cars more attractive
• China stupidly bans short-selling
• After a decade of underperformance, real estate is booming.

You can listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcast or any other podcast app. You can also watch it on YouTube here 👇

Some of the major economies will be releasing the latest inflation numbers in the coming days.

• US: 11th July
• India: 12th July
• Eurozone and UK: 17th July

Keep track of all the upcoming economic events here.

We have been publishing a lot of simple yet insightful content across platforms. We have collated everything in this post so that you don’t miss out on anything.

Here’s something for you to watch over the weekend.

As part of the quarterly settlement process, all unused funds in your account will be transferred back to the primary bank account today at the end of the day. You can expect to receive the credit of funds in your bank account during the day on 6th July. Read more.

🚀

You can now trade in both equity and commodity segments (MCX and NSE Commodity) with the same funds in your trading account. You no longer have to transfer funds separately for both the segments.

Here’s all you need to know👇

A look at how the market share of passenger vehicle manufacturers has changed over the years.

As I’ve said before, regulatory risk is the biggest risk for any regulated business.

We are in the middle of a period of excess in options trading. Volumes in index options have gone up from 4.6 lk cr in 2018 to 138 lk cr in 2024, and, more importantly, the share of retail has gone up from 2% to 41%.

We have been a big beneficiary of this jump in volume but have always been aware that it can be significantly reduced in size due to regulations, which can significantly hurt revenues, and that’s also why we have never made any forward projections.

But yeah, times will be tough for the broking industry going forward because almost everyone’s business model is skewed toward earning from options.

Kal Ho Na Ho is a good way to put it. 😬

We introduced several features over the last quarter, such as notes on marketwatch, a new fundamentals widget, and much more to improve your trading and investing experience. Read more.

The fundamentals widget on Zerodha is now powered by Tijori. It now has much more financial data about the company to help you make informed decisions.

India’s telecom industry has seen major shifts over the years. While many players have entered the sector, very few have stayed around. Here’s a look at how the Indian telecom sector has evolved.

So I was wondering who this person was who didn’t learn from Varsity, and the answer showed up on Linkedin. 😀

Jokes apart, Karthik Rangappa has done a phenomenal job educating millions of Indians on Varsity.

All the content is free and open without sign-up, and there are no annoying popups or other expectations. We’re also trying a new format, Varsity Live teaching, so people can learn however they want to—on their own or with some handholding.

~Nithin

Just so happy looking at this, the fact that retail investors have created wealth for themselves, and the fact that
Varsity has played a small role in their investing journey 😊

~Karthik

Last week, the US markets finally moved to the T+1 settlement, two years after the Indian markets did (thanks to SEBI) 😀.

Now, the next thing is moving to instant settlement. The tricky bit is that ~75% of trades are intraday speculative trades. So they would neither have the cash nor the stock with them for instant settlement. If you create another segment for only delivery-based trades, the impact cost due to lower liquidity will be quite high. So yeah, only time will tell.

Crypto exchanges work differently. You must first borrow to short-sell, but the position can be kept forever once you’ve done that. In the Indian markets, you can only short-sell equities for intraday.

SEBI recently introduced key changes to the dynamic price bands for stocks in the F&O segments. These changes aim to enhance volatility management during significant stock price movements and reduce information asymmetry.

What are price bands? Here’s all you need to know.

If you are tracking multiple stocks on your market watch, it can be hard to remember all the reasons. You can now add a quick note about why you are interested in a stock directly in the Marketwatch. Read more.

Equity investors at Zerodha have realized a profit of Rs 50,000 crores over the last 4+ years and are sitting on unrealized profits of Rs 1,00,000 crores on an AUM of Rs 4,50,000 crores.

By the way, most of the AUM was added in the last four years.