By Jayshree P Upadhyay
MUMBAI (Reuters) -India’s markets regulator has approved requests from the National Stock Exchange of India and BSE to move the expiry of equity derivatives contracts to Tuesdays and Thursdays, respectively, the exchanges said separately.
At present, NSE offers weekly and monthly derivatives contracts expiring on Thursdays while BSE offers expiries on Tuesdays.
The weekly contracts are benchmarked against their indexes of top 50 stocks and top 30 stocks, respectively.
Contracts with the new expiry days are applicable from September 1, with those for already introduced contracts remaining unchanged, the exchanges said on Tuesday.
Monthly contracts will now expire on the last Tuesday and Thursday of the month, respectively, for NSE and BSE.
Last month, the Securities and Exchange Board of India said expiry days for all equity derivative contracts would be limited to either Tuesdays or Thursdays to enhance investor protection and market stability.
In October, SEBI reduced the number of weekly options contracts available to investors to one benchmark index per exchange, among other measures, to curb a derivatives trading frenzy.
(Reporting by Jayshree P Upadhyay and Nishit Navin; Editing by Janane Venkatraman, Mrigank Dhaniwala and Tasim Zahid)
