Seeking to cash upon the investor demand for gold on 'Akshaya Tritiya', considered an auspicious day for buying the yellow metal, NSE and BSE will conduct extended trading till 9 pm in Gold ETF on that day.
The country's top bourses NSE and BSE said they have jointly decided to conduct extended live trading session on May 6 on the occasion of Akshaya Tritiya for trading in Gold Exchange Traded Fund (Gold ETF) securities.
The bourses would conduct trading in gold ETFs (exchange traded funds), which allows investors to buy or sell gold in electronic mode and not in the physical form, till 9 pm on May 6, as against the normal trading session end at 4 pm. The trading will begin at 9 am as per the normal opening.
Trading in other segments of the two bourses would be as per the normal trading hours.
The word 'Akshaya' means something that never diminishes and it is believed that something valuable purchased on this day never loses value and therefore is considered auspicious for buying of gold, jewellery and other valuable items.
Akshaya Tritiya is observed on the third day of the Hindi month of Vaishaka and this year it falls on May 6.
Last year, Akshaya Tritiya had fallen on a Sunday and the exchanges had kept trading open till 5 pm.
NSE saw the turnover more than doubling for gold ETFs in last fiscal.
Their total traded value of gold ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) on NSE surged to Rs 4,074.30 crore in fiscal year 2010-11 ended March 31, as against Rs 1842.36 crore in the previous year.
Gold ETFs, where returns are linked to the domestic price of physical gold but spare the investors from the trouble of buying and keeping the yellow metal in physical form, have been gaining ground among investors in past few years.
Their total traded value on NSE for 2006-07 stood at Rs 13.95 crore, which grew to Rs 478.8 crore in 2007-08 and then to Rs 1172.30 crore in the fiscal 2008-09.
There was only one asset management company offering gold ETF in 2007, as against about 10 currently.
These include Axis, Benchmark, UTI, HDFC, ICICI Prudential, Kotak, Quantum, Reliance, Religare and SBI mutual funds.
The returns on gold ETFs are linked to the domestic price of real gold and each gold ETF unit is roughly equal to the price of 1 gm of gold.
The gold ETFs' Asset Under Management -- the value of existing investments in these investment schemes -- stood at Rs 4,400 crore as on March 2011, marking a whopping increase of 176%since March 2010.
