My dad, HDFC Securities and Moneycontrol

My dad, now retired, likes to follow the stock market and dabble with small quantities, more to stay busy than anything else. He has Gujju DNA, after all. Stock trading and Gujju DNA almost always go hand in hand. I say almost because in yours truly, the DNA has not been transmitted. Unfortunately. My brother, in whom the specific gene has found its way, amplified many times over to boot, follows the trends and he also has opinions about them. He makes these opinions well-known and uses words like 'fundamentals', 'bear-run', 'taking positions', 'looking strong' and so on to make them sound rather well thought-through.

To make things easier for my dad, my brother one day sat down, installed the MoneyControl app on his cell phone and entered the few shares he held so he could monitor the fluctuations regularly. My dad was delighted as he could see all the details in one screen and then drill down to see various facets of his portfolio.

A week or so later, my dad happened to buy a few shares of a company. He uses the HDFC Securities app for this. The next day, I overheard him talking to my Relationship Manager (RM) from HDFC Bank. I had put the RM in touch with my parents a few months back so they could have the convenience of getting their basic banking needs taken care of. 

My dad was asking the RM, "I bought such-and-such share yesterday from your app. Why is it not showing in my MoneyControl app?" The RM could not understand the question so he asked my dad to repeat the question please. My dad repeated the question. If he bought stock, why doesn't it show in the MoneyControl app? The RM had no clue on what to respond. I burst out laughing and signalled to my dad that I would explain and told him to hang up.

I explained to him that the two apps were different and had no connection. We had to manually enter our purchases and sales in the MoneyControl app to keep track. HDFC Securities is merely a platform to buy and sell. He understood and laughed out loud himself!

To his credit, my dad has picked up a lot of stuff on the cell phone over the years. He makes all our utility and phone bill payments, recharges himself. He also can do stuff like order stuff on Swiggy, book cabs on Uber or Ola and so on. He also manages all his bank stuff on the mobile phone.

Last I heard, the HDFC Bank RM had asked for a change in role as soon as possible, though.