Hse Plans Evening Trade To Boost Volumes

Concerned over a steep fall in turnover, the Hyderabad Stock Exchange (HSE), as a survival strategy, has proposed to start evening trading.

Harinarayan Rathi, the newly-elected president of the bourse, said, the exchange would soon approach the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) seeking permission to start evening trading.

We feel that trading between 5.30 pm and 7.30 pm will attract the investors to trade and will improve turnover, he added.

Rathi said evening trading in those counters of city-based companies, such as Dr Reddy's Laboratories and Satyam Computer Services, which are listed on the US bourses, may attract volumes. Apart from these two, other major scrips under the permitted category can also attract volumes, he added.

Rathi said merger of regional exchanges with the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) or National Stock Exchange (NSE) was not necessary as the smaller ones can survive on their own because of the low overheads.

He said the best strategy for the Hyderabad bourse was to trade on BSE and NSE through its subsidiary, HSE Securities Ltd, and expand its network to other major towns in the State.

The exchange is already providing a trading platform to its members on the NSE segment through its subsidiary. It had also applied for the BSE membership for the same facility.

Rathi said that the bourse would start derivatives trading on the NSE segment by this year-end.

To expand its trading and depository participant (DP) operations in other major towns of the State, the exchange has already tied up with Netlinx, a category-A Internet service provider in the State, to use the latter's idle capacity at an affordable cost of Rs 1,500 per month per terminal. "This is cheaper, faster and reliable way of expanding into other towns," M Subramanyam, executive director of the exchange, said.