Mark Twain once divided the world into two kinds of people:
those who have seen the famous Indian monument, the Taj Mahal, and those who haven’t. The same could be said about investors.
There are two kinds of investors: those who know about the investment opportunities in India and those who don’t. India may look like a small dot to someone in the U.S., but upon closer inspection, you will find the same things you would expect from any promising market. Here we’ll provide an overview of the Indian stock market and how interested investors can gain exposure.
The BSE and NSE
Most of the trading in the Indian stock market takes place on its two stock exchanges: the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE). The BSE has been in existence since 1875. The NSE, on the other hand, was founded in 1992 and started trading in 1994. However, both exchanges follow the same trading mechanism, trading hours, settlement process, etc. At the last count, the BSE had about 4,700 listed firms, whereas the rival NSE had about 1,200. Out of all the listed firms on the BSE, only about 500 firms constitute more than 90% of its market capitalization; the rest of the crowd consists of highly illiquid shares.
Almost all the significant firms of India are listed on both the exchanges. NSE enjoys a dominant share in spot trading, with about 70% of the market share, as of 2009, and almost a complete monopoly in derivatives trading, with about a 98% share in this market, also as of 2009. Both exchanges compete for the order flow that leads to reduced costs, market efficiency and innovation. The presence of arbitrageurs keeps the prices on the two stock exchanges within a very tight range.
Trading Mechanism
Trading at both the exchanges takes place through an open electronic limit order book, in which order matching is done by the trading computer. There are no market makers or specialists and the entire process is order-driven, which means that market orders placed by investors are automatically matched with the best limit orders. As a result, buyers and sellers remain anonymous. The advantage of an order driven market is that it brings more transparency, by displaying all buy and sell orders in the trading system. However, in the absence of market makers, there is no guarantee that orders will be executed.
All orders in the trading system need to be placed through brokers, many of which provide online trading facility to retail customers. Institutional investors can also take advantage of the direct market access (DMA) option, in which they use trading terminals provided by brokers for placing orders directly into the stock market trading system.
Settlement Cycle and Trading Hours
Equity spot markets follow a T+2 rolling settlement. This means that any trade taking place on Monday, gets settled by Wednesday. All trading on stock exchanges takes place between 9:55 am and 3:30 pm, Indian Standard Time (+ 5.5 hours GMT), Monday through Friday. Delivery of shares must be made in dematerialized form, and each exchange has its own clearing house, which assumes all settlement risk, by serving as a central counterparty.
Market Indexes
The two prominent Indian market indexes are Sensex and Nifty. Sensex is the oldest market index for equities; it includes shares of 30 firms listed on the BSE, which represent about 45% of the index’s free-float market capitalization. It was created in 1986 and provides time series data from April 1979, onward.
Another index is the S&P CNX Nifty; it includes 50 shares listed on the NSE, which represent about 62% of its free-float market capitalization. It was created in 1996 and provides time series data from July 1990, onward.
Market Regulation
The overall responsibility of development, regulation and supervision of the stock market rests with the Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI), which was formed in 1992 as an independent authority. Since then, SEBI has consistently tried to lay down market rules in line with the best market practices. It enjoys vast powers of imposing penalties on market participants, in case of a breach.
Primary and Secondary Market
Primary Market
Primary market is the place where new shares or bonds are issued. Hence primary market is also called as new issue market. In primary market company sells the shares to investors to generate the fund. In primary market the trading is directly between investors and company. Here the price of share is decided by company and is fixed. In primary market investors can only buy shares, they cannot sell them. Shares purchased in primary market are sold in secondary market. In primary market company can raise the fund by three types that is public issue, private placement or right issue.
Secondary Market
Secondary market is also called as After market. Stock exchange is the secondary market. The stock exchange is the medium through which the exchange of shares, Equities takes place between the seller and the buyer. Secondary market is the place where most of the trading takes place. The trading of shares and capital in secondary market takes place between the buyer and the seller, company is not involved in transactions. The price of share is decided by demand and supply of the shares and price keeps on fluctuating. In secondary market no new stocks are issued, only trading of stocks is there.
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