!! Landmark day for Indian Investors (09/10/2007) !!

ICICIDirect announced today about its services for Indian investors who are interested in investing in US stock markets. I think it is a landmark day since people who want to diversify their risk into other markets now truly have an opportunity to do so. Indian investors can now invest in stocks listed on NYSE, Nasdaq and AMEX exchange through ICICIDirect. US markets are one of the most liquid markets in the world and offer an opportunity to invest in world class companies like Coco - Cola, Pepsi, Walmart, Microsoft, General Electric, Medtronic, Google, etc. Not only that. People can also invest in ADRs of good companies from all around the world including China Medical, Barclays Bank, BHP Biliton, etc

Please review the news article from Livemint for further details.

http://www.livemint.com/2007/10/09012552/ICICI-Securities-opens-up-US-s.html

Investors interested in investing in USA markets can also continue to read this blog. This author is based in USA and had been actively investing in both Indian as well as USA markets. My next blog article will be on Walmart and the investing rational to purchase Walmart stock. In the meanwhile interested investors can get more indepth knowledge about USA markets and US listed stocks by reading various free articles or subscribing to the paid service of independent research websites like

http://www.morningstar.com/
http://www.fool.com/
http://www.investors.com/
http://www.thestreet.com/

You can get more general information from websites like

http://finance.google.com/finance
http://www.kiplinger.com/
http://finance.yahoo.com/

Before investing in USA stocks please do not forget to visit Securities and Exchange comissions online database at

http://www.edgar-online.com/

You don't need to subsribe to the paid version of this database. Free version provides all the information. The disclosure laws in USA are very strict and scanning the database for useful information before investing in a specific stock can be very helpful.

Investors also need to be aware of the risk associated with investing abroad. The biggest would be currency risk; specially USA. Other risk could be high transaction charges and comparatively low returns on most blue chip stocks when compared to India. For example a blue chip like GE has barely returned 10% this year.

Will keep posting more information on USA markets in next articles. For any question on investing in US stock markets feel free to contact me on secmoney@gmail.com

Regards,

Bargain Hunter