BSE India Web Review

BSE and NSE are the two main bourses in India (while the third MCX-SX is just on the way to open). Out of it, BSE is the oldest stock exchange of Asia while second oldest in the whole world founded in 1875.

In this article we are going to give review on www.bseindia.com which is the official website of Bombay Stock Exchange India Ltd.

BSE website is worth a huge applaud (same with NSE), when they are compared with their counterparts in other countries. BSE website is more featureful and useful to not just investors, and traders and general public trying to find general information but also the professionals in capital markets.

BSE has this ‘Market Galaxy’ window on its home page which pops open when you click on ‘full view’ option. This gives the names of the stocks along with the happenings like high turnover than usual, yearly high, yearly low, lifetime high, lifetime low etc. This helps user to find the most active stocks. This feature also adds curiosity excitement to its website use.

The typical home page of the site shows moving ticker of stock quotes, sensex chart, derivatives quotes,  streaming headlines with links of corporate actions/announcements., latest updates/news from BSE and other all important links to inside pages. Recently BSE has started putting advertisements on its site and pages which has a little bit lowered the image of its site and the exchange itself in a small group of BSE followers who believe that an exchange should remain a classy establishments of bricks and mortar and not try to earn from ‘pay per click’ ads on its website. While we agree on this, the ads of companies which itself are listed on the exchange (or not) are not looking good on the site. It is true that the exchange is trying to make some money out of it, but it could lose much in terms of impression on the course. Lay investors and traders search for information on the site and they should not be distracted of misled by ads which they see on most other sites, as BSE website is not just another site. It is an institution of repute and mark of Indian capital markets.

Any ways, the site also has subsites on recently launched SME (http://www.bsesme.com) (Small and Medium enterprises Exchange) which is launched to help small and medium sized companies to get listed on the exchange.  The subsite for its much hyped and indeed commendable training institute BSE Institute Ltd, http://www.bsebti.com, gives information on training and certification programmes running from one day to fulltime MBA programmes mainly oriented at stock exchange operations, capital and financial markets. The BSE training institute has gained itself a lot of momentam in a short span of time of less than two years.

After SEBI allowed trading and investing in mutual funds through stock exchanges, BSE tied up with global top company in mutual fund space, Morninigstar Inc, and launched BSE Star MF feature, http://bseindia.morningstar.co.in/, which gives a lot of information on mutual funds and promote investing online and demat form through the exchange. Another subsite is a huge database on almost all listed and many unlisted PSUs (public sector undertakings), http://www.bsepsu.com/, which is run in collaboration with data provider company Prime Database. While this is an excellent initiative of the exchange, it should not lead to create any bias towards investing into listed Government companies. However, this discretion is completely up to the visitor of the site; but as indicated it is quite obvious to gather such sense of bias when a whole site is dedicated to PSUs. However, we believe BSE must have put proper disclaimers, if not prominently. The exchange’s website also gives link to its subsite http://www.directorsdatabase.com/, which is a site again developed in collaboration with data provider. This site is another breakthrough after, BSE’s training institute, and BSE PSU site. We say so, it because this site contains information on directors in public domain, this is a big dimension in good governance, to give out information to put on this site by directors is voluntary; however it is encouraging to see the huge database and people who volunteered. This surely increases confidence in and towards good corporate governance and transparency and open space for more ideas and initiatives in this regard.

 Below are some of the handy and useful links on the BSE Website:

For live quotes of internation indices being traded on BSE http://www.bseindia.com/deri/HotLinks/Foremarketwatch.aspx?L=2&id=hd7&Lid=0

Live indices watch, to get a feel of sectoral trading pattern and mood http://www.bseindia.com/mktlive/mktwatch.asp

HINDI BSEINDIA SITE http://hindi.bseindia.com/

GUJARATI BSE SITE http://gujarati.bseindia.com/

MARATHI BSE SITE http://marathi.bseindia.com/

BSE DERIVATIVES MARKET WATCH http://www.bseindihttp://www.bseindia.com/markets/Derivatives/DeriReports/derimarketwatch.aspx?expandable=0a.com/investors/trade_check.aspx

INDICE WATCH http://www.bseindia.com/indices/indexwatch.aspx?expandable=0

INDUSTRY/SECTOR WISE LIST OF STOCKS WATCH http://www.bseindia.com/markets/Equity/EQReports/industrywatchList.aspx?expandable=2

BSE is putting advertisements on its website home page to generate some income, in our opinion this is a cheap way and gives a taint to its website, its quality and impression. It should stop this practice. Yes, it can restrict the ads to financial and investment sector but not other than that.

Surely there is no doubt that BSE INDIA website is a rich source of information and tools for investors at par with the website of NSEINDIA.