In a surprising move, top bourses of the country have proposed to extend trading time till 7:30 pm. The exchanges raised the issue with the aim of aligning the Indian markets with global trends.
But on the flip side, many brokerages are opposing the move citing logistics and employee-related issues, PTI reported market sources as saying.
At present, trading commences on the exchanges at 9:15 am and close at 3:30 pm, with a 15-minute window between pre-opening and post-closing sessions.
While the exchanges had tried to extend the timings earlier as well, strong resistance from the broking community forced regulators to shy away from implementing the proposals.
As of now, capital market regulator SEBI has maintained a neutral stance and wants to establish a consensus among brokers, market intermediaries and exchanges.
Brokerages opined that if the trading session has been extended, they would have to call in employees in two different shifts to cope with the longer trading period and assign two relationship managers for each client.
"Imagine a scenario when an investor calls in a buy order in the morning at 10 am, but wants to place a sell order later at 6 pm. In this case, he will talk to one relationship manager in the morning, while the evening person may not have any idea about the early morning order," one broker told the agency.
An exchange official told PTI, "Trading in India mostly fails to capture the prevailing trend in most parts of the European markets. While, the trends in the American markets get reflected in the Indian market only next morning."
Earlier in July, the Metropolitan Stock Exchange of India (MSEI) had issued a notice announcing that trading hours in the equity segment would be extended from 9 am to 5 pm starting July 7, but the notice was withdrawn later.
Market regulator SEBI had in October 2009 permitted stock exchanges to set trading hours between 9 am to 5 pm. From December 2009, Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) had advanced market timings to 9:15 am from 9.45 am.
