The country's top bourse National Stock Exchange (NSE) today began trading of two leading US stock indices, with a first-day turnover of Rs 122 crore and also announced cash incentives for enhancing the trading volumes of these indices.
Marking their debut in India, the derivative contracts of S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) -- the two key indices of the US stock market -- began trading at NSE today.
At the close of today's session, the traded value of derivative contracts on S&P 500 futures, S&P 500 options and DJIA futures was nearly Rs 122 crore.
A total of 4,122 contracts were traded in the derivative contracts of the global indices, NSE said in a statement.
"While the traded value of futures contracts of S&P 500 and DJIA were good, S&P options contracts also clocked in volumes of Rs 50 crore," it added.
NSE has waived transaction fees for trading in the global indices, till February 29, 2012, to encourage active participation in the contracts.
In addition to the transaction fee waiver, the NSE today also announced a Liquidity Enhancement Scheme (LES) for trading in these global indices.
In a circular, NSE said that the market participants fulfilling all the required terms and conditions would be rewarded proportionately from an incentive pool of Rs 18 lakh per month during the time the scheme is in operation.
The scheme would be open for all participants -- brokers as also their clients -- and the brokers would have pass on the benefit to the clients within 48 hours of the payment by the exchange, if the recipients of the incentives are clients.
While the performance would be monitored on a daily basis, the incentives shall be paid on a monthly basis.
The incentives would be paid only if the average daily traded value (the total of traded value for futures on S&P 500 and DJIA and notional value for S&P 500 options) in that month is at least Rs 35 crore.
The scheme would come into effect from September 15, 2011 and would remain in force for six months till March 14, 2012.
NSE said it could revise or discontinue the scheme anytime with an advance notice of 15 days.
Also, the scheme would be discontinued as soon as the average trading volume, during the last 60 trading days, reaches 1% of market value of the underlying, or six months from introduction of the scheme, whichever is earlier.
The trade-level incentive would be Rs 400 per Rs 1 crore of volume for buy-side contracts and Rs 1,700 per Rs 1 crore of volume in sell-side contracts. The incentives would be paid only for a maximum daily traded values of Rs 100 crore for futures and Rs 1,500 crore for options contracts.
