How to sell illiquid investments on Zerodha as an NRI?

I hold some bonds which are extremely illiquid. Sometimes there is only 10-20 units trades in a day. I’d like to start selling this position, however, given the NRI brokerage fees, I’m concerned that liquidating the position over a longer timeframe (given the 100 rs per trade fees) will end up costing me more than the profit I have built up. I would expect the position to take atleast 2-3 weeks of trading to be able to liquidate.

Anyone have any advice on what todo?

Maybe post here the specific scrips (and respective volumes) that you wish to liquidate.

Folks can review and anyone wishing to purchase them can then purchase them on NSE/BSE after coordinating a suitable date (on which you place them for sale on NSE/BSE) and the counter-party bids and buys them.

This assumes that you are able to find a price acceptable to both involved and that there are no tight circuit-limits preventing trading at an agreeable price. In the latter case, selling in multiple lots is anyways going to be the way to liquidate illiquid bonds.

Also, if these are dividend/interest-paying bonds, there maybe additional liquidity in secondary markets like NSE/BSE during the period just before the record-date of the bond, as the buyer receives the entire interest for the period, simply for holding the bond even for a short duration - effectively increasing their yield.

Your post about liquidating illiquid bonds is helpful. I wish to take a similar approach but without forcing the lower circuit. I have a full portfolio of corporate bonds which I want to liquidate. Normally this won’t be an issue since I could just sell in small amounts to whatever bids are available everyday.

The issue is Zerodha’s pricing model for NRIs. It discourages small trades with a fee model of 0.5% or ₹100, whichever is lower per executed order. The 0.5% is actually a large hit on a fixed income security.

The Rs. 100 fee requires at least Rs. 20K of bonds to be transacted post which the value becomes reasonable. Unfortunately for some of these securities, the total daily turnover is in the range of Rs. 20K. So I expect the 0.5% to be applicable on almost all sell transactions.

I think the ideal scenario would be an Unlimited model introduced by Zerodha where each trade costs nothing and instead we can pay a fixed monthly fees instead. This would also allow NRIs to invest in small cases more effectively.

(unless someone comes-up with something that both of us are missing,
i suppose this thread is going to be more about thinking out aloud / thinking it through)

Unless there’s any guarantee that such a scheme is imminent,
comparing

  • the likelihood of such a scheme becoming available in the near future
  • the reasons behind the desire to liquidate your current portfolio of corporate bonds

…one can decide if there is any urgency to liquidate the corporate bonds (any imminent risks? any opportunity costs? any need for liquidity?) or can continue to hold them and wait for something else to happen (traded volumes of these specific bond to increase? new brokerage plan to be introduced? …) and make it easier (basically reduce the costs) to liquidate these bonds.

Meanwhile, if you are OK with having the specific scrips, volumes, expected-price associated with your online-handle/pseudonym, then go ahead and post them here (or in other forums where such a discussion would be on-topic), enabling you to coordinate with folks interested in buying them through the exchange, by having everyone involved placing coordinated limit-orders on some agreed-upon date.