World over, the spot markets in equities are operated on a principle of rolling settlement. In this kind of trading, if you trade on a particular day (T), you have to settle these trades on the third working day from the date of trading (T+3).
Futures market allow you to trade for a period of say 1 month or 3 months and allow you to net the transaction taken place during the period for the settlement at the end of the period. In India, most of the stock exchanges allow the participants to trade during one-week period for settlement in the following week.
The trades are netted for the settlement for the entire one-week period. In that sense, the Indian markets are already operating the futures style settlement rather than cash markets prevalent internationally.
In this system, additionally, many exchanges also allow the forward trading called badla in Gujarati and Contango in English, which was prevalent in UK. This system is prevalent currently in France in their monthly settlement markets.
It allowed one to even further increase the time to settle for almost 3 months under the earlier regulations. This way, a curious mix of futures style settlement with facility to carry the settlement obligations forward creates discrepancies.
The more efficient way from the regulatory perspective will be to separate out the derivatives from the cash market i.e. introduce rolling settlement in all exchanges and at the same time allow futures and options to trade. This way, the regulators will also be able to regulate both the markets easily and it will provide more flexibility to the market participants.
In addition, the existing system although futures style, does not ask for any margins from the clients. Given the volatility of the equities market in India, this system has become quite prone to systemic collapse. This was evident in the MS Shoes scandal.
At the time of default taking place on the BSE, the defaulting member of the BSE Mr.Zaveri had a position close to Rs.18 crores. However, due to the default, BSE had to stop trading for a period of three days.
At the same time, the Barings Bank failed on Singapore Monetary Exchange (SIMEX) for the exposure of more than US $ 20 billion (more than Rs.84,000 crore) with a loss of approximately US $ 900 million ( around Rs.3,800 crore).
Although, the exposure was so high and even the loss was also very big compared to the total exposure on MS Shoes for BSE of Rs.18 crores, the SIMEX had taken so much margins that they did not stop trading for a single minute.
Futures market allow you to trade for a period of say 1 month or 3 months and allow you to net the transaction taken place during the period for the settlement at the end of the period. In India, most of the stock exchanges allow the participants to trade during one-week period for settlement in the following week.
The trades are netted for the settlement for the entire one-week period. In that sense, the Indian markets are already operating the futures style settlement rather than cash markets prevalent internationally.
In this system, additionally, many exchanges also allow the forward trading called badla in Gujarati and Contango in English, which was prevalent in UK. This system is prevalent currently in France in their monthly settlement markets.
It allowed one to even further increase the time to settle for almost 3 months under the earlier regulations. This way, a curious mix of futures style settlement with facility to carry the settlement obligations forward creates discrepancies.
The more efficient way from the regulatory perspective will be to separate out the derivatives from the cash market i.e. introduce rolling settlement in all exchanges and at the same time allow futures and options to trade. This way, the regulators will also be able to regulate both the markets easily and it will provide more flexibility to the market participants.
In addition, the existing system although futures style, does not ask for any margins from the clients. Given the volatility of the equities market in India, this system has become quite prone to systemic collapse. This was evident in the MS Shoes scandal.
At the time of default taking place on the BSE, the defaulting member of the BSE Mr.Zaveri had a position close to Rs.18 crores. However, due to the default, BSE had to stop trading for a period of three days.
At the same time, the Barings Bank failed on Singapore Monetary Exchange (SIMEX) for the exposure of more than US $ 20 billion (more than Rs.84,000 crore) with a loss of approximately US $ 900 million ( around Rs.3,800 crore).
Although, the exposure was so high and even the loss was also very big compared to the total exposure on MS Shoes for BSE of Rs.18 crores, the SIMEX had taken so much margins that they did not stop trading for a single minute.