In zerodha for liquidbees haircut is 8 percent. Some other broker has 10 percent. I do not see any good reason for the additional 2 percent haircut.
There must be a reason, something that is associated with their RMS 
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I believe this scenario exist with discount brokers where investable monies are maintained with them unlike Icici Direct, where the funds are in my bank account.
In the same example, you contributed 20K of which 10K was utilised for trading. Yes the remaining will be float and this is how discount brokers make their money. Cant you move the 10K to your bank account at end of day or on Friday evening after the market closes and transfer it back on monday. The bigger risk is if the broker just shuts down and take the float money with them. SEBI is coming out with more controls on this aspect as per the interview I saw with SEBI chairperson yesterday. For the first time, I saw the lady very angry when she was speaking about Karvy.
An intriguing question which the user asked was, can the broker use the balance margin limits for their proprietary trading. I personally feel this is not possible as the trading limit is allocated to a customer and if it is misused, customer will have an higher outstanding than what he did and this can lead to serious issues. It is like banks gives you an OD limit which remained unutilised and the Bank then draws from the unutilised OD limit and uses the funds for their own purpose. Until the broker is such low level, third rates scum, I do not think anyone would do this.
We had a case of karvy where they took the shares of clients which were dormant using the POA and gave it to banks as if the shares belonged to them and took loans from a bank.
I honestly do not know if they utilise the amount to generate some float income or not. I was just guessing. I don’t think they use it for trading because of multiple regulations. But float income is a possibility I think. I could be wrong.
In fact I tagged mods here to know how exactly it works only to not get any reply.
It won’t show that amount in my trading account since it’s used of margin. The collateral given to me is lower so that cash is utilised. It can’t be withdrawn.
Yes. This risk is there. I have my account with zerodha and one other discount broker. Only 10 percent is with other broker. For now I think I can take that risk. I don’t know why I always have that trust with Zerodha.
Anyways SEBI has come up with some new rules where the funds will lie in the bank account only. I am yet to read that. And I guess it happening in less than 3 months.
So that risk will be eliminated.
This is WORRYING. Why are they purposefully avoiding to reply such an important query? We need to get the official answer from zerodha on this.
Could you please share more information on this rule and the exact date from which it will be implemented? The risk as mentioned by @neha1101 is very much there with many brokers out there.
And please checkout this latest article published yesterday in Economic Times, I am sharing the link to the Cached Page, because otherwise you need premium access to read the full article -
According to the article - Almost Rs 50,000 crore of investor funds were held with brokers and clearing members as on 6 January 2023.
Clearly it is a big source of income for many brokers out there and therefor they are not openly talking about this.
“In its current form, the proposal would have a huge impact once cash goes out of the broker’s balance sheet. Most broking firms will have to change their business model since many large ones have substantial float income,” said Gurpreet Sidana, chief operating officer, Religare Broking.
“It’s a good move from the point of view of clients’ funds. But, upstreaming all funds to clearing corporations will hurt other income of broking firms. We will have to figure out how to maintain our revenue growth,” said Prabhakar Tiwari, chief growth officer, Angel One.
And if anyone here is aware regarding who is the Clearing Member for zerodha, then please share this information.
I think that if we want to avoid the risk of having our money lying unused at the broker end, then we should first invest it into some Debt Funds etc. and then should pledge them with the broker to get the margin. This will save us, even if the broker goes bankrupt for any xyz reasons of any type. If my current assumption is wrong, then please kindly correct me on this thing.
Thanks a lot
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A relative who is a broker once said - he sells out of the money call or put (with less than 3-5% probability to come become in the money) to make some extra income from client’s idle fund and extra margin.- at that time I did not understand what he meant …now I do
Yes. This was happening before. And the margin required wasn’t a lot. So even if they sell OTM which are trading at 0.5 on expiry day they could make a lot of money. There was no restriction on leverage.
But now I do not think that’s possible.
But some small interest on idle funds is a possibility. Still waiting for mods to reply. If they had clarified then it would have been better. Otherwise we will keep assuming things which may not even be true.
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I think difference between margin i.e. difference between clearing corporation offered margin to broker and broker offered margin to client - can be used by broker for option selling for example…
how do you think totally zero brokerage brokers survive?
either float income or use of margin I explained above.
I believe its still happening …difference between margin of different brokers should give you a clue …
Mods or @Ananth can you clarify this…is it possible that brokers who charge haircut than NSCCL or NSE provided files - can use those extra margin for FNO trading?
This is because there are 2 types of haircut files. One is from clearing corporations and other one is from exchanges. We use exchange EOD Var file (NSE) which has var % comparatively lesser than the NSCCL one. Also, clearing corporations haircut has minimum haircut % criteria.
NSCCL : https://archives.nseindia.com/content/equities/APPSEC_COLLVAL_05042023.csv
NSE’s EOD Var : https://www.nseindia.com/all-reports
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Ok to clarify -
You said NSE EOD var file - has var% less than NSCCL and you also said clearing corporation (NSCCL) has min. haircut …I am confused …which one has lower NSCCL or NSE (exchange)
This link you sent has both files …EOD nse var % …the eod nse var file is .dat file which is not opened with common software available.
Do you follow exchange haircut (in other words EOD % VAR) or NSCCL haircut?
Can brokers charge higher haircut to clients than either NSE or NSCCL provided haircut ?
@Ananth The exchange stipulated hair cut for liquidbees is 10% currently. I guess broker cannot go below what is stipulated by the exchange. Does zerodha charge 8% haircut on liquidbees now ?
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Yes they do. That’s why I wanted to know why my other broker has haircut of 10 percent.
Brokers can charge more but never less than the haircut % stipulated by the exchange. Currently liquidbees haircut is 10% in exchange published file.
I do not know who is right and who is wrong. If I am getting 2 percent extra margin obviously I would favour them. Zerodha is giving 92 percent. Last I pledged was yesterday.
Also I wanted to know why are they charging extra. Won’t the broker get 92 percent margin out of it. Only 90 is passed on to me. What happens to that 2 percent. The extra cash I maintain with my broker generates some income. I would have maintained lower cash if that 2 percent was passed on to me.
We use exchange EOD Var file (NSE)
I said NSE var is comparatively less. It means few scrips NSE var will be higher than NSCCL. The clearing corporation has minimum haircut criteria like 10%, 20% etc. whereas there is no such criteria with NSE Var file.
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It should open in notepad.
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Thanks @Ananth. If we go here - https://www.nseindia.com/all-reports and look at the APPSEC_COLLVAL_06042023.csv the liquidbees hair cut is given as 10%. So which one takes precedence the VAR shown on the NSE page you shared or the haircut % given by the NSE csv file ?
There are 2 separate haircut files i.e., one from NSE (Exchange) and other one from NSCCL (CC). We follow NSE one and Liquidbees for example is 8% in NSE and 10% in NSCCL.
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