SEBI curbs listing day volatility with call auction session

Excerpts from India Business Hour on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show »

In a move to check volatile price movements on the first day of trading in newly listed and re-listed stocks, market regulator SEBI has said that normal trading can now take place only after a call auction session, reports CNBC-TV18�s Sajeet Manghat.

Since the regulator was looking at various options, it took SEBI more than a year to get this act together.

If you remember, some of stocks used to run up by nearly 50-60% on listing day and used to jump by nearly 100% over a period of week. However, once retail investors used to get in, they suddenly plunge by 50-60%. Due to this, the regulator was looking at a mechanism to curb the volatility and it has finally come out with one wherein all the IPO stocks and the companies which are relisting again will have to go through a pre-open call auction for 45 minutes after which there would be a settlement of trades. Only after that will the opening trade begin at 10:00 am instead of 9:15 am. So that's a one hour period where you have to put in all your bids and the entire thing would be delivery based.

The regulator has gone one step further and said that any IPO below Rs 250 crore will have a price band after 10:00 am and any IPO above Rs 250 crore will have a 20% price band. It also says that IPOs below Rs 250 crore will have to go through a 10 day period where they will be trade for trade (T2T). This basically means that you can trade in the scrip only if you have shares in your account, which means there won�t be any speculative trading in these stocks. So that's a big move from SEBI to curb the listing day volatility.

Watch the accompanying video for more details..