Indian equity benchmarks’ trade timing is likely to be extended up to 5 pm, news agency Reuters reported on Tuesday citing a business channel. Market regulator SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) issued a framework for timing extension in 2018.
Preliminary discussions with market participants are going on with respect to extending trading hours, the report said. Currently, the domestic indices are open between 9:15 am and 3:30 pm.
Last month, the market regulator came out with a standard operating procedure (SOP) asking stock exchanges to inform about trading disruptions to stakeholders within 15 minutes of such occurrences and extending the trading time by one-and-a-half hours in certain outage conditions.
“If due to any technical reason or otherwise, continuous trading on stock exchanges is disrupted, it is of paramount importance that not only all market participants including other MIIs are promptly informed about the outage but also the trading hours are extended, if required, so as to provide an opportunity for smooth closure of intraday positions,” SEBI said.
Amid much social media chatter about an impending decision from NSE on extending trading hours for F&O (futures and options) segment, Zerodha CEO Nithin Kamath opined that it could “potentially lead to lower participation and liquidity in the longer run.”
Rumours are doing rounds that NSE may extend F&O trading hours to 11:55 pm. Kamath said this could affect the life of traders outside trading.
“I’m unsure how it will affect the mental health of active retail F&O traders in the long term. Tracking P&L (profit and loss) for long hours is stressful & can affect life outside trading. While it could boost revenues for the capital markets business in the short term, I’m unsure if retail investors will end up doing better. This could then potentially lead to lower participation and liquidity in the longer run, which will affect everyone,” Kamath stated in a series of tweets.
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