The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has called for public comments on a new index derivates framework aimed at improving investor protection, promoting market stability in this sector and ensuring sustained capital formation.
The framework will tackle the increased retail participation, the offering of short tenure index options contracts and heightened speculative trading volumes in index derivatives on expiry date etc.
Some of the proposed changes include the following:
- Rationalising the strike price methodology to create a uniform strike interval between exchanges and limit the number of strikes to no more than 50 for index derivatives at contract launch time;
- Upfront collection of option premiums from clients;
- Removing the margin benefit for calendar spread positions on contracts expiring the same day;
- Clearing corporations/stock exchanges to monitor position limits for index derivative contracts on an intra-day basis;
- Revise the minimum value of derivatives contract to between INR1.5 million (USD17,861) and INR2 million at the time of introduction, and from INR2 million to INR3 million six months after introduction;
- Single benchmark index of exchange for weekly options contracts; and
- Increase the extreme loss margin by 3% at the start and on the day before expiry, and by a further 5% at the start of expiry day.
Public comments and suggestions must be submitted by 20 August 2024 at the link on the official SEBI website.