Sebi to extend trading hours in case of outage at stock exchanges

In case normalcy is not restored till 2:15 pm, trading hours will be extended till 5:00 pm

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has issued guidelines for extension of trading hours in case of an outage at a stock exchange along with standard operating procedures for stock exchanges for handling such an outage.

In a circular issued on Monday, the capital markets regulator said that an outage would mean stoppage of continuous trading, either suo motu by the exchange or by reasons beyond their control.

“If the trading on the affected stock exchange does not resume to normalcy even one hour before the scheduled market closure, trading hours for all stock exchanges would automatically get extended for additional one and half hours for that day,” said Sebi.

Moreover, if the outage is during the last trading hour and latest before 15 minutes of normal market closure, trading hours of all stock exchanges will be extended.

This implies that if there is a failure to start pre-opening by 2:15 pm, then trading hours will be extended till 5 pm for the day.