Comexes look forward to better times

NCDEX has seen volumes surge 15%

On Thursday, the Muhurt trading day, commodity exchanges clocked good volumes with Multi Commodity Exchange or MCX taking a lead with Muhurt day volumes surging three times compared to last year. National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange or NCDEX, second largest and agri centric commodity exchange has seen volumes surging 15%.

Encouraged by falling gold and silver prices, traders participated actively on the Muhurrat trading on the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX). Total turnover of the MCX more than trebled on the Muhurrat trading on Thursday to Rs 5210.68 crore as compared to Rs 1590.95 crore on the Muhurrat trading previous year on November 3, 2013.

Total business under gold trading segment recorded over 150% increase to Rs 1550.79 crore this year compared to Rs 653.67 crore. Similarly, turnover from silver contracts shot up to Rs 840.41 crore from Rs 333.71 crore the previous year.

"This Diwali the market participants have shown confidence in MCX and participated actively on the exchange platform," said P K Singhal, Joint managing director of MCX.

Lower prices of bullion was another factor that drove participant this year for active participation.

This Diwali has brought in much more steadiness in operations of the MCX. Last year just a day before Diwali, exchange's promoter and visualizer Jignesh Shah was forced to resign and market participants were not enthused to trade on MCX. This time around, new investors Kotak bank has entered, even there is stability and consistency in management.

Even NCDEX has seen an increase of 20% from Rs.1148 crore last Diwali to Rs.1377 this Diwali.

Exchange industry has seen sharp drop in volumes this year and the fall is lowest since 2009-10. However, Wednesday's decision by the Forward Markets Commission to increase position limits for commodity futures and earlier decision of Financial Stability Development Council's sub-committee to allow physical market foreign traders and domestic financial intuitions in to commodity futures market will also have positive impacts. NCDEX MD Samir Shah said the move to liberalise position limits will help improve depth and participation on the exchanges.