India‘s largest options contract Nifty Bank, which many retail F&O traders used to consider as a lottery ticket, will see its last weekly expiry today. New SEBI rules are coming into effect next week. The market regulator had asked both NSE and BSE exchanges to keep weekly expiry for only one derivative product. In such a situation, BSE chose Sensex. While NSE chose Nifty, Nifty Bank was more popular. Apart from this, the last weekly expiry of Nifty Midcap Select will be on November 18. The last weekly expiry of Nifty Financial Services will be on November 19.
Will all monthly expiries be on the same day?
Nifty Bank and the other two indexes will remain available for monthly expiry trading. “We are in talks with Sebi on whether all monthly expiries should be on the same day or different days of the week. Guidelines are coming,” said Sriram Krishnan, chief business development officer, of NSE.
Dominance of Nifty Bank
In the first half of the current financial year, Nifty Bank captured the largest share of 38% in terms of premium turnover in the derivatives market. Nifty was in second place with a share of 28%, followed by BSE Sensex at 7% and BSE Bankex at 3%. Now Nifty Bank traders will have to look for other options. Market experts say that the volume will now shift to other products along with monthly expiry.
What was the objective of SEBI?
ET quoted Anand James, Chief Market Strategist, Geojit Financial Services, in a report, as saying, “The Nifty Bank and Nifty weeklies target different types of traders. While Nifty is a broad market benchmark, Nifty Bank is a sectoral index and has the least number of components and a smaller lot size, making it the most volatile of the two. So those who have grown accustomed to its wild swings and multiple trading opportunities will miss it, but wasn’t that what SEBI intended?”