Thaindian News

Mumbai, Dec 17 (IANS) In an attempt to boost trading volumes and correlate better with other Asian bourses, two top stock exchanges in India Thursday said they will advance the opening bell to 9 a.m. and increase trading hours by 55 minutes — but from Jan 4 instead of Friday.
The stakeholders, including brokerages and investors, however, remained divided on the move.

Both the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) said they will change the timings from the present opening bell at 9:55 a.m., while retaining the close of trade at 3:30 p.m.

The move followed a directive from the markets regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).

“Based on the market feedback, it has been jointly decided that the revision of market opening timing to 9 a.m. shall be effective from Jan 4, 2010,” the two bourses said in a joint statement.

“In the interim, the current market open timing of 9.55 a.m. shall continue.”

The two exchanges had earlier decided to implement a revision in the trading hours from Friday.

“We welcome this move of postponing the implementation of extended trading hours,” said Dinesh Thakkar, chairman and managing director of brokerage firm Angel Broking. “There has been large scale apprehension associated with the change of timing.”

According to an equity researcher with another brokerage, many large brokers were geared for the additional trading hours, but the smaller ones needed time to adjust and adapt.

The decision to postpone the implementation will give the smaller stakeholders the much-needed breather.

“The new timings will help exchanges get more business, especially from foreign funds. This was going to other Asian markets in Hong Kong and Singapore,” said Jagannadham Thunuguntla, the equity head for brokerage firm SMC Capitals.

“If India has international aspirations, they might as well go for such realignments, even though for brokerage houses, it will mean more overheads — like more personnel and longer man hours that need to be compensated.”

SEBI, which primarily initiated the move, said it will soon come out with a white paper on the issue, explaining the need for fine-tuning the trading and how the investing community will benefit from the same.

Though the change of timings had no impact on the market performance Thursday, the sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) closed at 16,894.25 points, down 18.52 points or 0.11 percent over its previous close at 16,912.77 points.

At the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the broader 50-share S&P CNX Nifty, too, ended a tad lower at 5,041.75 points, against the previous close at 5,042.05 points, with a marginal fall of 0.3 points.