The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has approved a list of 31 additional stocks eligible for trading in the derivatives segment.
The approval was granted on the basis of applications made by the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE).
Of the approved stocks, 21 will be available on both the BSE and NSE, while the remaining will be available only on the NSE, according to a Sebi release. Scrips allowed for trading in the futures and option (F&O) segment only at NSE are include Bharat Electronics, BEML, CMC, Engineers India, Hexaware, Infotech Enterprises, ICICI Bank, Nalco, Silverline and Tata Elxsi.
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Prominent scrips in which trading is permitted in the F&O segment of both the exchanges include Hero Honda, Aftek Infosys, Geometric Software, Global Tele, Himachal Futuristic, KPIT, Mastek. Incidentally the market has greeted the list released by Sebi with a good deal of surprise.
According to Arun Kejriwal, director at Kris Brokerage, "We are moving towards an open casino and scrips which figured in the 2001 scam have been given pride of place." However, the market has welcome the inclusion of stocks such as Hero Honda, Polaris and the PSU stocks.
At present, there are 31 stocks available for derivatives trading. In November last year, the Sebi board paved the way for inclusion of more scrips in this segment by altering the eligibility criteria.
The eligibility is based on the average daily market capitalisations and the average daily traded value in the previous six months on a rolling basis. The selection would have to be from the top 500 stocks, which fulfil this criteria. The exchanges were told to submit their list based on this criteria, finally to be approved by Sebi.