NSE CEO Pushes to Extend Trading Hours for Indian Equities

NSE (National Stock Exchange of India) CEO Ashish Chauhan is reportedly pushing for longer trading hours in equities.

Speaking at a recent meeting, Chauhan urged three industry bodies including ANMI to back a proposal for longer trading hours.

"If Singapore and America can work for 16-18 hours, India, as a developing market, working for 6 hours and 15 minutes is not a great idea," he said. "We continuously resisted longer hours, and countries like Singapore prospered using our prices to trade."

Chauhan was referring to the use of Nifty futures trading via SGX (Singapore Exchange) by institutional investors, which has drawn trading volumes away from NSE.

He said longer hours on NSE would enable mutual funds, banks, and insurance companies to increase participation in hedging and liquidity-providing activities.

Other proponents of longer trading hours say the move will allow investors to better manage overnight risk. Currently, retail traders tend to settle their trades intraday to avoid overnight risk.

Currently, commodity markets in India trade for 15 hours from 9am to 11:55pm, while equity trading is only permitted from 9:15am to 3:30pm.

In 2018, SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) permitted stock exchanges to extend trading hours for equity derivatives until 11.55pm.

NSE did not implement the change at the time due to resistance from the broking community, but it is now considering allowing single stock futures to traded up to 11.55pm.