Indian investors can now do global hunting for investing in equity shares by choosing among the blue chips such as Microsoft, IBM, Wal-Mart, Coca Cola and Google.

India’s number one online trading site, ICICIDirect.com has launched its overseas trading facility for Indian investors to invest upto $2 lakhs in a financial year in Equities, Exchange Traded Funds, Stock Options, Index Options.

ICICI has launched the service in partnership with Penson Financial Services which is USA’s fourth largest broker having $6.8 billion in assets. The portal will provide option to invest in US stock exchanges such as NYSE, NASDAQ and American Stock Exchange.

For registering for this service, a one time fees of Rs. 99 is to be paid and money is remitted to USA through ICICI Bank. The facility is only available to resident individuals and not available to corporate, partnership firms, HUF, Trusts, and NRIs.

ADAG’s Reliance Money was the first company to launch overseas trading facility   in partnership with CMC Markets but that was only for derivatives segment.

Thus, ICICI Web Trade has become the first to offer ‘delivery-based’ overseas trading service. Though in derivative segment, trading in futures is not allowed, RBI prohibits investing overseas for use in margin trading.