The National Stock Exchange (NSE) and MCX-SX have successfully commenced trading in futures contracts on new currency pairs of the rupee versus euro, yen and pound with a trading volume close to Rs 4,000 crore for the three new pairs.

Market participants responded enthusiastically to the inclusion of new currency pairs. The three new currency pairs clocked a volume of Rs 1,277 crore on the National Stock Exchange today. MCX-SX has also registered a turnover of around Rs 2,700 crore -- Rs 1,417.16 crore in EUR/INR pair, Rs 664.68 crore in GBP/INR pair and Rs 638.9 crore in JPY/INR pair.

Pramit Brahmbhatt, CEO, Alpari Forex (India), said, “We feel it is a very positive move by the Indian regulators and policy makers to infuse more liquidity to the currency market and also taking the right step towards making the Indian rupee fully convertible. With the Indian foreign trade increasing with European countries, this move will definitely help exporters and importers who have interest in the European market, while JPY being a more volatile currency will provide more speculative opportunities to the retail traders.”

Brahmbhatt said, “The next few months will be very interesting for the Indian currency market and one thing is for sure that this market can only grow from here. Further to this we also feel that now the Indian retail trading community will definitely look positively to the regulators to introduce few cross currency pairs in the near future. If this happens it will definitely be a very good thing for the Indian financial industry.”

The new currency pairs contributed 9.61 per cent of the total currency turnover in value terms. The first trade was executed by East India Securities Ltd. IndusInd Bank executed the first trade amongst banks which was incidentally also the most active bank today. Union Bank of India was the first PSU bank to trade and execute the single largest trade. ICICI Bank and State Bank of India also participated actively, the NSE said.

Source: Indian Express