I trade full-time, and I like trying different platforms, so over time, I ended up with accounts with many brokers.
Recently, I sat down and checked my overall P&L across all of them.
What I noticed was very simple. With the big discount brokers, everything was already there. Open the app, see the P&L, see the charges, done. No confusion.
With many other brokers, it wasn’t that clear.
Some showed P&L but not the full charges.
Some small brokers asked me to wait for an email to get the PNL report.
Some bank brokers had charges shown in a completely different place.
It wasn’t that the trades were bad.
It was that the numbers were hard to trust quickly.
That’s why it made sense to me that most active traders end up using a few big discount brokers.
Not because they are perfect.
But clarity matters when you trade every day.
If I can’t see my real P&L easily, I can’t trade calmly.
While true and that’s why I sticked to Zerodha over the years, reports still have a long way to go.
Cost of acquisition in capital gains is missing. Note that, this could give you a good tax cut, but it’s completely missing in the reports. The current financial year’s consolidated cost/taxes are there, but for CG, you need to know the cost/taxes for acquisition of that security as per FIFO in the previous year. That(Per security per transaction cost) is not present. If you’re just approximating the cost, you’re not in tax compliance. A centralized change would help a lot of traders.
Bonds are a huge mess. I had to fight with the support team for like 6 months to get the discrepanct bond price correctly input in the console, explaining the basics etc.
No interest statements for bonds. I have to check the dates in trading qna and then check my bank statements
Coin MFs. Stamp duty cost is not present/ not recorded anywhere in any reports - not in console, not in Coin. I have to check my emails to search and deduct it.
I still see a previous year’s extinguished Treasury bill in my current unrealized P/L
While trading/frontend features are welcome, I’ll take backend report changes over the trading any day. These are the backbone of the broker. These are still lacking and fixable too. Hire me:)
We’ve recently launched trade-wise charges for tax reports, making it easier to adjust charges in the P&L before filing returns.
We’re also working on handling debt scrip maturity and debt interest statement. It’s a work in progress and should cover T-Bills, G-Secs, NCDs, etc. Additionally, we’ll add charges for mutual funds.