Jane Street barred from Indian markets as regulator freezes $566M

I am shocked by the size of the retail index options traders. They are selling put options naked without any underlying hedges and getting fleeced as a result.

Two strategies are detailed with trades: 1) expiry day price discrepancies between index options and underlying 2) expiry day painting the close

My understanding is that it is the closest to legal gambling available in India and so the local market for gambling type behavior inflates the Indian options volume.

NIT: It's _marking_ the close. "Painting" has a different meaning.

Selling naked puts doesn’t seem particularly outrageous. About half the time that I want to buy a position, I’ll sell a series of put options just OoM until I get assigned the shares I want, collecting small premium along the way.

My “hedge” in this case is that I want to own the shares. (I’m short vs where I want to be.)

Futures index option traders are not looking to get assigned a basket of hundreds of stocks. They are cash settled, for one, so all that gets assigned is a profit or loss.

This is why the flow is so valuable. The volume is pretty big, the spreads are enormous and the traders are terrible.

Why is this down-voted? Thank you to point out the elephant in the room.

Actually, There are more people on Sports betting sites(Dream11, Jungly Rummy etc) than people who have hold Demat accounts.

Your comment leaves out some key details that need mentioned as not to confuse anyone. I'd like to clarify that this is true for a future alone (if cash settled), but not a futures option.

Selling one futures option and having it expire ITM simply gives the trader a one contract long position in the underlying future contract. OTM is full collection of the premium sold as usual. I've done both many times over the years. One legit strategy is selling a futures option with the intent to be long the contract, just like someone would do with selling an equity put option with intent to own 100 shares.

You can most definitely do this as a retail trader and do extremely well in many cases, but it's also very easy to go to $0 and is not for the light hearted.