The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has extended the market trading hours for interest rate derivatives to 5 pm, effective Thursday, February 23, the stock exchange said in a notice on Tuesday. Currently, the trading window is of six hours and 30 minutes which starts at 9 am in morning and ends at 3:30 pm. The move aims at converge the trading window of interest rate derivatives with underlying market timings, the NSE circular said.
There will be no change in trading hours for other interest rate derivative contracts. All existing expiry contracts with expiry day beyond 23 February 2023, and all new expiration contracts introduced thereafter will be available for trading till 5 pm on expiry day, as per the NSE statement.
“In today's world, economies are highly connected and the integration of the global markets is gradually increasing. The Indian stock market reacts to the developments in other major economies and markets in the US and Europe. Therefore, markets which have longer trading hours can hedge the risk arising due to the global information flow in a more efficient way. Therefore, any move by NSE to increase the trading time for the equity segment will help the market participants and retail investors," said A Balakrishnan, Executive Director at Geojit Financial Services on extension of stock market trading hours.
“Indian markets offering T+1 settlement and now extended trading hours reflects the maturity of our markets. This should have minimal impact on operations as majority of the trading happens online (i.e. minimal offline support). This should also lower the impact of instances of aftermarket announcements and market reactions on next trading day. However, we are still in early days of retail investors reaching maturity in market behaviour and most of them loose money due to over trading. This trend can accentuate but should eventually average out. Also, lots of checks and balances have already been placed by SEBI and exchanges in terms of margins, additional surveillance etc to ensure that outlier market activities are under check. This should attract more capital and trading for Indian markets going forward," said Divam Sharma, Founder at Green Portfolio.