Leading stock exchange BSE, which has become the country’s fourth bourse to offer currency derivatives trading, has logged a cumulative turnover of over Rs 10,000 crore in this segment in just about a fortnight.
In 16 days of trade in currency derivatives since launch on November 29, the exchange has also recorded total volumes of nearly 16.50 lakh derivative contracts.
BSE has joined three other stock exchanges — National Stock Exchange (NSE), MCX—SX and United Stock Exchange (USE) — in this market.
So far, 16.49 lakh currency derivative contracts have been traded on the BSE platform, amounting to a cumulative turnover of about Rs 10,275 crore.
For the same period, NSE, which has the largest share in currency derivative trading, recorded a turnover of Rs 1.46 lakh crore and contract volumes amounting to 2.26 crore.
Meanwhile, MCX-SX has witnessed a turnover of Rs 68,207 crore from currency derivatives with over one crore contracts traded on the segment, in this period.
Currency derivative contracts allow investors to take position on change in the foreign exchange rates between pairs of two currencies, such as rupee and dollar.
Trading in currency derivatives in India was introduced in 2008 with NSE (National Stock Exchange) being the first bourse to offer such trades.
NSE, which began trading in currency futures on August 29, 2008, had clocked a turnover of Rs 4,010 crore, in the first 16 days, from the segment. A total of 8.80 lakh contracts were traded on its platform during this time.
Besides, MCX-SX had seen a turnover of Rs 5,318 crore in currency derivatives within first few weeks of the segment’s launch on October 7, 2008 and contract volume of 10.80 lakh.
BSE has began trading for the currency futures on the contracts on US dollar-Indian rupee, euro-Indian rupee, British pound-Indian rupee and Japanese Yen-Indian rupee, while currency options trading commenced on the contracts on US dollar-Indian rupee.
The currency derivatives turnover on nation’s three bourses — NSE, MCX-SX and USE — has been on a downslide since July following SEBI’s move to tighten the exposure limits for currency derivatives to check large scale speculations in the capital market and help government stem fall in rupee value.
The data has been compiled from websites of the stock exchanges.