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Long trading hrs won't lead to higher volumes: Deena Mehta

Published on Mon, Nov 09, 2009 at 12:24 | Source : CNBC-TV18

Updated at Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 10:29

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Deena Mehta, Managing Director, Asit C Mehta Investments Intermediates

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It is probably just a matter of time before the trading hours are extended perhaps from 9 am to 5pm which is two-and-a-half hour increase in trading hours. Is it going to happen and if it happens is it going to be a good thing or a bad thing for most participants in the market? In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Deena Mehta, Managing Director of Asit C Mehta Investments Intermediates, spoke on the issue and her outlook.

Here is a verbatim transcript.

Q: You are not very supportive of this. Let us take your various points that you have raised one by one. There has been a feeling that volumes will go up with extension and that may actually lead to a deeper market. You are saying that it does not necessarily lead to more depth and may actually hamper price discovery, not help it. Can you explain that point?

A: Firstly I am talking about volumes. I strongly believe that volumes are a factor of the market movement, the events which take place in the market and the news which comes in the market. I think, largely, volumes are event-based and they are based on-generally when markets go up, the volumes are higher. We have seen very few occasions where the market goes down and the volumes are higher. It is not that it doesn't happen, but it happens occasionally. So having extended hours will not necessarily boost volumes because a lot stronger factors drive the volumes and not essentially having longer market hours.

Q: Point number two about this extension for many is that now brokers or broking teams will have to work in shifts-that as well you do not see as a good idea for the work force?

A: I would come back to the objective of extending the market hours. In my opinion there are only two reasons why market hours need to be longer; one is the market space or the time which is allotted is too short and orders do not get executed which we saw in the ring days, we had 12 to 2.30 markets and we had hardly 30% execution ratio.

Secondly, in my opinion markets hours need to be changed if we are following a much bigger market and if you close the market and then it opens the next day and the other market has moved because it is a big market and you get gaps in your opening. In my opinion these are the two main drivers which would require adjustment of the opening timings. Saying that brokers will have to work, I have written a note on this subject and I have not referred to brokers at all. You are extending the working hours from eight hours to something like eleven or twelve hours-after doing all this, what is the objective behind this and as I outlined there are two objectives which would be served if you have longer market hours. I don't feel that these objectives would be met by having this extended times.

So it is not just a broker's point of view, it is every person who is part of this cycle be it a mutual fund manager, be it the person who is giving net asset value (NAV), be it the mutual fund redemptions or be it the depositories or even insurance companies which have so many fixed maturity plans (FMPs). So it is not just to do with the brokers, I think every person who is there in the capital markets industry directly or indirectly related is impacted by this decision. I think one need not look at a very narrow view of just volumes which I feel again does not really dependent upon timings.

Q: The other argument of course is that this is being done in order to catch more of the global market trading action, that is where you don't concur with?

A: In the case of gold for instance, there are the American and London markets which are far large markets and if you close your markets and if they are on, then you have exposures which open with a gap and there is a lot of cross trading which is happening. Over here we are talking about Singapore market about which I have given various statistics also and there is a fraction of our market which is happening in Singapore. So it is not as if lot of action happens in Singapore, we miss out on that action and then we feel that we should be matching our timings with Singapore markets. I think it is Singapore, which has to match with Indian markets because lot of action so far as the derivative products and Nifty which Singapore trades in the action is over here. So it is more for Singapore to match our markets rather than us matching the Singapore markets.