The National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) on Tuesday extended the market trading hours for interest rate derivatives. As per official updates, the market trade timings for interest rate derivatives has been extended to 5 pm.
While the move will come into effect only from February 23, 2023, the announcement has been made by NSE in advance, much alike to market expectations. Before this announcement by NSE, the contracts were traded between 9 am and 3:30 pm.
As per updates from the exchange, the move of extending these trading hours is aimed at “converging it with underlying market timings.” Since the specifications of this change are also out in the public domain, the interest rate derivative contracts for February expiry are expected to be available till 5 pm on February 23.
However, it must be noted that there will no change in trading hours for other interest rate derivative contracts. There will also be no change in the final settlement price computation mechanism – it will continue to be calculated based on the last two hours of volume weighted average price, subject to a minimum of five trades.
The official notice by NSE reads, “"All existing expiry contracts with expiry day beyond Feb. 23, 2023 and all new expiration contracts introduced thereafter shall be made available for trading till 5 p.m. on expiry day.”
According to PTI, market experts believed that extending the trading hours would be helpful as it would “assist in increasing capital formation by enabling more people from India to participate and attract foreign investors to invest and hedge their portfolios with currency and equity F&O.”
