New Delhi, July 7 (IANS) Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Monday said that the futures and options (F&O) trading market has become a playground for ‘big players,’ and the Jane Street saga shows that retail investors are bearing the maximum brunt.

Jane Street has been barred by the capital markets regulator SEBI from the Indian stock market for indulging in manipulative trading practices that allegedly enabled the company to make unlawful profits running into thousands of crores.

In a post on social media platform X, Rahul Gandhi said he had clearly stated in 2024 that “the F&O market has become a playground for ‘big players,’ and small investors’ pockets are continuously being drained”.

“Now SEBI itself is admitting that Jane Street manipulated thousands of crores. Why did SEBI remain silent for so long? At whose behest was the Modi government sitting with its eyes closed?” said the Congress leader.

Reposting his old post of September 24, 2024, he further stated that “And how many more big sharks are still shorting retail investors?”

Amid the SEBI’s allegations of Jane Street making profits of more than Rs 43,000 crore in index options by using wrong strategies, Gandhi on Monday shared a new post on X regarding the SEBI.

In his previous X post, he had said that unregulated F&O trading has increased 45 times in 5 years. He claimed that 90 per cent of small investors lost Rs 1.8 lakh in the last 3 years.

Earlier in the day, SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey said that the regulator has all the powers to act against manipulative trading activities in the matter related to New York-headquartered trading major Jane Street Group, which is very evident from the interim order that has been issued to ban the global giant from the Indian stock market.

He said the need is for enforcement and surveillance rather than more regulations, and the “order in the Jane Street case speaks for itself”.

“Within the regulations only, we have bought it. So, regulations remaining the same, it is the enforcement and surveillance that can actually help. Excess regulations do not mean excess regulation. Those are two different things,” Pandey remarked.

He highlighted that a great deal of analytical work went into the Jane Street case, as manipulative activities are done in many ways.

Jane Street indulged in aggressive trading in the derivatives (futures) segment, where the firm executed trades to influence market prices by unfair means to make a fast buck.

–IANS

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