MUMBAI: A day after the markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) issued a consultation paper seeking to fix weekly equity and index derivatives expiries to Tuesdays and Thursdays, the largest bourse National Stock Exchange (NSE) has deferred its plan to change the expiry day of all index and stock derivatives to Mondays from Thursdays until further notice.
The shift, which was scheduled to take effect from April 4, would have seen all index and stock derivative contracts move from Thursdays to Mondays. Earlier this month, the NSE, which has the world’s largest derivatives volumes, had announced that Nifty weekly contracts, currently expiring on Thursdays, would be shifted to Mondays. Additionally, the expiry of monthly, quarterly, and half-yearly Nifty contracts would have been changed from the last Thursday of the month to the last Monday.
However, following the SEBI's consultation paper issued late Thursday evening, the exchange decided to delay the implementation of this change until further notice.
"Members are required to note that the implementation of expiry contract days is deferred until further notice in view of the SEBI consultation paper dated March 27, on final settlement day (expiry day) for equity derivatives," the NSE said in a statement Friday.
In its consultation paper issued on Thursday, SEBI proposed that the expiries of all equity derivatives contracts across exchanges be uniformly limited either to Tuesdays or Thursdays. This would help optimize the spacing between expiries and avoid designating either the first or last day of the week as the expiry day. It also wants exchanges to take prior SEBI approval to launch or modify any contract expiry or settlement day.
"Every exchange will continue to be allowed one weekly benchmark index options contract, on their chosen day (Tuesday or Thursday)," the regulator proposed and sought public comments on these proposals until April 17.