Market regulator SEBI plans to increase fairness derivatives tenure to curb losses

“Markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is planning to extend the tenure and maturity of fairness derivatives contracts,” its chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey stated on Thursday (August 21, 2025), because it appears to be like to curb buying and selling in a phase the place greater than 90% of merchants endure losses.

A surge in derivatives buying and selling over the previous few years, pushed partially by retail traders, has prompted the SEBI to restrict the variety of contract expiries and improve lot sizes to make such trades costlier.

“The plans to increase the tenure of such contracts is at a conceptual stage,” Mr. Pandey stated on the sidelines of an trade occasion. Shares of inventory alternate operator Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and low cost dealer Angel One slid 5% every. Derivatives buying and selling contributes greater than 50% to BSE’s income, and three-fourths to that of Angel One.

Separately, SEBI additionally arrange a devoted unit to look at patterns of manipulation, the regulator’s whole-time member Kamlesh Varshney stated on the occasion.

The transfer comes after SEBI had briefly barred U.S.-based agency Jane Street for its buying and selling methods that “manipulated” a key inventory market index. Jane Street has denied these allegations and stated its buying and selling methods have been easy arbitrage.

Mr. Pandey added that SEBI would work with the Corporate Affairs Ministry and the inventory exchanges to construct a regulated platform for the so referred to as “grey-market”, the place unlisted shares change arms.