Indian trading apps roll out access to U.S. stocks, boosting retail demand for Nvidia, SpaceX, Apple

Major Indian investment platforms are expanding access to U.S. stocks, allowing millions of retail investors to diversify into global assets amid continued underperformance in domestic markets.

Earlier, access to U.S. markets and exchange-traded funds was limited to wealthier Indians, via global banks and wealth management firms.

Groww, an Indian investment platform that accounts for more than 29% of the country’s 46 million active investors across stock brokerages, rolled out the U.S. equity trading feature earlier this month, Harsh Jain, chief operating officer and co-founder of the company, told CNBC.

Nvidia (NVDA), SpaceX (SPCX), Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Micron (MU) and Meta (META) are the most popular companies among early users, Jain said, whose firm has provided access to more than 10,000 U.S. stocks, exchange-traded funds, and fractional share ownership.

Zerodha, the second-largest trading platform with a 15% share of active clients as per NSE data, has also started beta testing access to U.S. stocks and plans to launch in a few weeks, the report said.

Another popular brokerage with 6.7 million active retail clients, Angel One, is also reportedly planning to launch U.S. stock trading on its platform.

There is a “big interest” among Indians to invest in U.S. stocks, especially in tech companies, Nitin Jain, chief executive and director at Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Singapore, said. He added that “retail investors like whatever goes up,” pointing to the frenzy among Indian investors for investing in crypto a few years back.

India’s benchmark stock index, the Nifty 50 (NIFTY), has dropped nearly 13% since the start of the year, while the S&P 500 (SP500) has gained over 12%.