Advancing mkt opening to 9am, an arrogant move: Samir Arora

Excerpts from Bazaar on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » RELATED NEWS See stock markets trading 9am-5pm soon: Experts NSE advances market opening to 9am; BSE follows suit Will extend trading hours on market consensus: NSE May end up trading 9-5 at some point in future: BSE BSE advances opening bell; bigger extension for NSE? ALSO READ See what other experts are saying about markets See what FIIs are saying about the markets See what Udayan Mukherjee is saying about the markets Nifty BSE | NSE 29/05/12 Are Mutual Funds betting on Nifty?

Expressing discontent over the stock exchanges' move to advance market opening to 9 am, Samir Arora, Fund Manager, Helios Capital, said, it was an arrogant step on the part of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE). "The extension has been done at a very short notice. It will only increase inefficiency-there is no research to show that market efficiency will improve post this move."

Further he said there was no significant SGX trading even in volatile times.

Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview with Samir Arora on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: What sense have you made of trading hours extension?

A: As we are based in Singapore we are not directly impacted by this move since it still falls within our office hours. This is most arrogant moves that I have seen from any Indian institution in the last many years; to give two days notice to a system, to hundreds and thousands of employees to change their life, change their schedules, to change their travel plans, as if some inside news is leaked out and has to be immediately implemented. If nothing else they could have given three-six months notice. But this is unheard of. I am saying it more from my macro angle rather than a person who will gain or lose from this.

Q: All the chaos actually started from where you live. The apparent need to do it is to contest what is happening with the SGX Nifty in terms of trading volumes - apparently its been done to give retail investors as much an equal chance as you guys over there have. Does that make any sense to you?

A: First of all, we do not believe that there is any trading in the Singapore Stock Exchange. In various volatile times, in the last one-two years, we have tried to buy or sell the Singapore Nifty here and it does not even trade in 100s. I mean you cannot even trade 1,000 contracts. I do not think National Stock Exchange (NSE) or the system has shown how much volume happens in Nifty before Indian market opens.

I do not that is a lot but if you have seen some data, I will be happy to change my opinion on this. But although in the last few months we haven't done it but we did try to at the time when P-Note ban was there in 2008 try to trade in Singapore Nifty and all that and it does not trade. Even today I am not sure it trades a lot because there is no way of hedging for the market maker and therefore you need an opposite side immediately.

Mostly, the desperation happens when there is some overnight event and therefore mostly very body is on the side on those days. I do not think there is much trading that happens here because there is no way they can protect or hedge themselves simultaneously which they can do in India by going from stocks to index and vice versa and with much larger number of players. So I do not think that happens.

But in any case when in Mumbai, we do not even care about what happens to north Indian. Why do we certainly care about some hedge fund living in Singapore and Hong Kong, I do not understand.