Broker's Terminal and Different Order Types Explained (Zerodha)

Let’s learn how to navigate a broker terminal, explore the various features it offers, learn the different types of orders available, how to fund your account, and finally how to buy & sell a stock. 

For this tutorial, we will be using Zerodha's mobile app— Kite. We recommend you add some funds to your trading account and follow this tutorial so that you can gain first-hand experience with the broker's trading terminal.

Understanding the Broker’s Terminal

When you first log in to your account on Zerodha’s Kite app, you will be greeted with the watchlist tab by default. The app has five main tabs. The top left corner of the app displays the name of each tab.

1. Watchlist & Overview

The watchlist tab contains a list of securities to which you can add stocks and other financial instruments and monitor them for potential trading and investing opportunities. You can customize up to seven watchlists based on your needs. The dropdown arrow in the top left of this tab brings down the overview feature, which shows brief data on the prices of NIFTY50 & BankNifty and the funds in your account.

How to Add a Stock to Your Watchlist?

1. Select any watchlist from the tab
2. Click on search & add 
3. Type the name of a stock. eg: Reliance 
4. Click on the + icon parallel to the stock name
5. Click on < arrow on the top left
6. The watchlist will display the stock you selected

To add stocks to other watchlists, click on any of the watchlists from the top panel and repeat the steps. You can add up to 50 stocks to a watchlist.

How to Rename a Watchlist?

1. Click and hold on the name of the watchlist you want to change

2. Click on the edit icon 

3. Type the new name

4. Click on save, and your watchlist will be renamed

How to Remove Stocks From the Watchlist?

1. Click and hold on the watchlist name

2. Click on the delete icon parallel to the stock that you want to delete

3. Click on save

How to Reorder Stocks in Your Watchlist?

1. Click and hold on the name of the watchlist

2. Click on the dots to the left of the stock’s name, and drag up or down to change the order

3. Click on save

How to Filter & Sort Your Watchlist?

1. Click on the configure icon to the right of the search bar
2. Under the filter section, select or unselect NSE & BSE to filter your watchlist according to the stock exchange
3. Under the sort section, there are three parameters:

• A-Z Alphabetically - Sorts the watchlist in alphabetical order
• % Change - Sorts the watchlist on % change in price
• LTP - Sorts the watchlist in ascending or descending order of LTP

2. Orders

An order is an instruction given to the broker to buy or sell a stock. There are 4 subtabs in the orders tab:

1. Open: When you place an order, it will be shown here until the order gets executed

2. Executed: Once the order is executed and the stock is bought, it will be shown in the executed tab.

The details in open and executed tabs are only valid for a day and clear themselves on the next day.

3. GTT: GTT stands for Good Till Triggered. This tab shows all the GTT orders placed with the broker. We will learn about GTT in the coming sections.

4. IPO: This section contains details about ongoing IPOs and applied ones will be shown here.

3. Portfolio

There are two subtabs in the portfolio tab:

1. Holdings

This tab displays all the stocks that are in your Demat account. The feature not only presents a summary of the holdings, including the invested amount, current value, and returns generated but also provides details about each individual stock holding.

• T1 mark near a stock means that it is a T1 holding. T1 will disappear the next day.
• Day’s P&L shows the changes in the profit or loss of the holdings on any given day.

2. Positions

This tab shows all the trades/investments that you took on that particular day. 

When you buy a stock, it will be shown in the positions tab on that day and will be shown in the holdings tab the next day.

4. Tools

There are 3 subtabs in the tools tab:

1. Baskets

A basket is a feature that allows you to buy a group or portfolio of stocks rather than buying them individually.

2. SIPs

Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs) allow you to invest a certain amount of money into stocks and other securities at regular intervals. Once you create a basket, a SIP can be done on a particular basket.

3. Alerts

This feature allows you to create alerts on stock prices so that you don’t need to monitor them constantly.

5. Profile

This tab shows all the account settings and profile information: 

• Funds - This section is where you deposit and withdraw funds into your trading account.
• App Code - It displays the code to log in to Kite web.
• Profile -  Shows all your profile information such as your name, client code, email, phone number, etc
• Settings - This option allows you to change various settings within the app.
• Console - Console is the back office of your Zerodha account.
  • Portfolio option shows a detailed view and breakdown of your holdings.
  • Tradebook shows all the trades you have taken on any particular day or range of days.
  • P&L shows the total amount of money you gained or lost in a particular period.
  • Tax P&L displays all the documents required to file tax returns with the Income Tax Department. 
  • IPO displays all the current and upcoming initial public offerings (IPOs). You can also apply for IPOs via Zerodha.
  • Gift Stocks is a feature that allows you to gift stocks to other Zerodha users.
  • Family allows you to add up to 10 family member portfolios (Zerodha accounts) and track the consolidated portfolio through one account. Only viewing and tracking are allowed after explicit authorization from the family member's account.

Apart from these five tabs, there is an overview section in the app that displays two indices, NIFTY and BANKNIFTY, by default. It also shows the funds available in your account to trade. You can access the overview section from the dropdown pin on the top right corner of the screen and is accessible from any tab in the app.

Features in the Order Placement Window

Invoke the order placement window by clicking on any scrip and pulling it up.

1. On the top of the window, the details of the scrips such as the name of the listed exchange, LTP, and price change are displayed.

2. A buy and sell button follows, which you can click to place an order.

3. Option to view the price chart of the scrip. We will learn about charts in the upcoming modules.

4. Option to set a price alert on the stock.

5. Option to create a GTT order for the stock.

6. Market depth is a real-time list displaying the bids and offers for the stock. Buyers place orders called bids, and sellers place orders called offers. It displays the top five bids and offers including their quantity, price, and orders. 

7. Shows Open, High, Low, & Previous Close

• Open represents the price at which the stock opened today.
• High represents the highest price the stock traded at.
• Low represents the lowest price the stock traded at.
• The previous close shows the closing price of the previous day.

8. Various data such as volume, average trade price, last traded quantity, and last traded at are shown along with the lower circuit and upper circuit. We will discuss what upper and lower circuits are in the upcoming modules.

9. The fundamentals and technicals of the stock can also be viewed in detail.

Types of Orders

You can either place a buy order or a sell order. A buy order instructs the broker to buy a stock and a sell order instructs the broker to sell a stock. There are Regular orders, Cover orders, AMO orders, and iceberg orders for buy and sell. 

What are Regular, Cover, AMO & Iceberg Orders?

These are different types of buy and sell orders. 

• Regular orders are normal orders that we place to make trades.
• A Cover Order (CO) is an order with an in-built risk mitigation mechanism. Simply put, a cover order is a market order or limit order that is placed along with a stop loss order. 
• An AMO order (After Market Order) allows you to place orders for the next trading day This is especially helpful for people who can't actively track the markets during the live session - 9:15 am to 3:30 pm. AMO orders are allowed for all product types (CNC/MIS/NRML) except for CO.
• An Iceberg is an order type that slices orders of larger quantity (or value) into smaller orders, where each small order, or leg, is sent to the exchange only after the previous order is filled. This is only used for orders with huge volumes.

Both buy and sell orders have the following order types, execution, and validity instructions.

Product

• Intraday - This order is placed for taking intraday trades. This is how we tell our broker upfront that we will be taking an intraday trade and will exit it on the same day before the market closes.
• Longterm - This order is placed for taking delivery of stocks. We place a long-term (CNC) order when we want to buy and hold stocks for the long term.

Execution Instructions

• Market Order - To buy a stock at the current market price.
  
• Limit Order - To buy a stock at a specific price. If the limit price is below the current market price, it will effectively act as a market order, and the order will be immediately executed.
  
• Stop-loss order (SL) - To buy a stock above the current market price. Set the trigger price, the price above which you want to buy the stock. Also, set the limit price, the price at which you want to buy the stock when the price reaches the trigger price.
  
  Eg: Suppose the current market price of a stock is ₹98 and you want to buy the stock at ₹102 only when the price crosses ₹100. Then place an SL order with a trigger at ₹100 and a limit price of ₹102.
  
• Stop-loss Market order (SL-M) - This is a type of SL order in which the stock will be bought at the current market price when the price is triggered. Only a trigger price has to be entered.

Validity Instructions

• Day Order - The order will be valid till the end of the day if the day order is placed, which means that it will be open until the end of the day.
• Good-Till-Triggered - A GTT order will be valid for one year. If the order is not executed today, it will be open for 1 year.
• Immediate or Cancel Orders - The order if not executed right after placing, will be canceled.

How to Add Funds to Your Account?

You can fund your account using various payment methods including UPI and net banking. There will be zero charges if you fund your account via UPI.

Here are the steps to add funds to your account:

1: Go to Profile and Click on Funds

2: Click on Add funds

3: Enter the amount that you want to deposit

4: Select the payment method

  We will select UPI as the payment method here.

4: Complete the payment

  Voila! You’re done.

You've now learnt how to navigate the broker’s app and the different types of orders and their use cases in this chapter. We also discussed the steps to add funds!