Sebi floated a consultation paper that suggested a series of measures to protect retail traders and enhance market stability.
“The suggested changes, even with the STT increase, won’t really change options volumes. But on the flipside, they will reduce futures volumes,” Kamath said.
The Zerodha co-founder and CEO further noted that futures traders have higher odds of making money than option buyers.
“On a gross basis, futures traders are profitable about 50% of the time as opposed to options traders, who are only profitable about 10% of the time. This is because options come with almost unlimited leverage, whereas leverage on futures is capped at 6 times (15% for index),” he said.”Whether it is an STT increase in Budget or contract size going up to 20 lakhs, these changes will incentivize futures traders to move to options. If the intent is to reduce speculation, then the solution is maybe to make it harder for non-serious people to trade by having a product suitability framework,” Kamath added.On the basis of measures suggested by an expert panel, Sebi proposed various measures to be adopted by stock exchanges and clearing corporations for regulation of derivatives trading.These include rationalisation of options strikes, upfront collection of options premium, removal of calendar spread benefit on expiry day, intraday monitoring of position limits, minimum contract size, rationalising of weekly options and increase in margin near contract expiry.
Under the minimum contract size, the regulator proposed the idea of increasing the minimum value of derivatives contract from Rs 5-10 lakh to Rs 15-20 lakh in the first phase and Rs 20-30 lakh in the second phase.