Sebi Sets SOP for Commodity Exchange Outages, Extends Trading Hours

New Delhi, May 27 (PTI) Sebi on Monday came out with a standard operating procedure (SOP) asking stock exchanges having commodity derivatives segment to inform about trading disruptions within 15 minutes of such occurrences and extending the trading time by 30 minutes in certain outage conditions.

Stock exchange outage means stoppage of continuous trading, either suo moto by exchange or by virtue of reasons beyond control of stock exchange.

If an outage occurs on one exchange, market hours will remain unchanged on unaffected exchange, Sebi said in a circular.

Under the SOP, the stock exchange that suffered the outage will have to intimate Sebi immediately after the occurrence of the outage, while the bourse has to inform market participants and trading members within 15 minutes from the occurrence of an outage through broadcast message and by publishing on its website.

Further, the affected stock exchange would update about the ongoing outage in the time intervals of 45 minutes from the initial intimation, until normalcy of operations is restored. Extension of trading hours needs to be mentioned in the intimation by the affected stock exchange.

Affected stock exchange would restore operations to normalcy at the earliest including from the Disaster Recovery Site and carry out various activities.

The guidelines will be effective from July 1, 2024, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said.

For contracts or products traded up to 5 pm/9 pm, Sebi said that if trading resumes to normalcy at least 30 minutes before scheduled market closure (excluding 15 minutes of prior intimation time), trading hours would remain unchanged on that exchange.

It further said that market participants will have to be intimated by 4:15 pm or 8:15 pm regarding resumption of trading by 4:30 pm or 8:30 pm. If the bourse has sent the intimation by such time then there will not be any extension of trading hour.

If the intimation to market participants about resumption of trading will be sent at 4:45 pm or 8.45 pm then trading hours will be extended by 30 minutes from 5 pm or 9 pm. If intimation is not sent to market participants by 4:45 pm or 8:45 pm then there will be no extension of trading hours. The intimation should also include details as to when investors can/should login to modify their position.

For contracts traded up to 11:30 pm/11:55 pm, Sebi said market participants will have to be intimated by 10:45 pm or 11:10 pm regarding resumption of trading by 11 pm or 11:25 pm. The intimation to re-start trading can be sent latest until 11:10 pm.

"The intimation shall, inter-alia, inform that trading shall commence from 11:25 pm for a duration of 30 minutes i.e., extended trading hours would be till 11:55 pm...If intimation is not sent to market participants by 11:10 pm, then there shall be no extension of trading hours," Sebi said.