The authorities raised the ante 10 days ago, when the Reserve Bank of India curbed lending to stockbrokers and proprietary traders. The move targeted the leverage that fuelled explosive growth in the derivatives market, where average daily notional turnover reached US$5.2 trillion by the end of 2025. The drumbeat of tightening measures and the crackdown on Jane Street Group’s trading practices since Bhatia’s remarks are now threatening to curb volumes and the ambitions of high-frequency trading firms.
(Feb 23): In the autumn of 2024, a senior Indian securities regulator stood before a room full of money managers and foreign investors with an unusual message: India did not want to be the world’s largest derivatives market.
“This is a crown we don’t wish to wear,” Ashwani Bhatia, then a board member of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, said at an event in Mumbai.
