SEBI strives to seek investors’ participation

One stop shop for the investors:

Despite of periodic amendments, Indian investors are still seemingly hesitant towards commodities trading as compared to the equities. SEBI was mulling over the topic of integrating equities with commodities after its merger with the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) in 2015.  Indian capital market regulator, SEBI, recently recommended a single license for equity and commodity brokers. Earlier NSE and BSE had applied for commodity segment on their terminals from SEBI.

Accordingly now NSE and BSE would be able to trade in commodities; and vice-versa MCX will be able to trade in equities. Discussion on this will be the agenda of the board meeting to be held on June 17.

This move by SEBI would help to reduce the transaction costs and agreement costs. Moreover, it would give single permit for investors for all asset classes, plus facilitate regulators to issue single regulations for entities. The difference would be limited to setting up of strategies.

The panel has also been discussing option trading for commodities which is limited to equities so far.

SEBI to boost investment in startups:

In August 2015’s regulations put forth by SEBI, the ecommerce startups belonging to the IT and Biotechnology sectors were supposed to be listed on the Institutional Trading Platform (ITP) built specially for the same. The platform was open only for HNIs and institutional investors to save retail investors from the price volatility of such IPOs. However, Infibeam, an ecommerce startup, which was the only one listed on ITP, did not see higher participation of investors.

To add to it the committee under SEBI recommended limiting the minimum ticket size for participating in start-up IPOs to Rs 5 lakhs from Rs 10 lakhs.

SEBI relaxes redemption norms for MF investors:

SEBI allows the investors to withdraw a part of money from Mutual Funds, notwithstanding the restrictions put forth by Asset Management Company on the redemption up to 2 lakh rupees. The time of restriction should not exceed 10 working days for a 90 day maturity for MFs. The whole idea is to bring in liquidity by reducing the lock-in period and induce diversification.