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

1) buy large volumes of stocks and/or stock futures that are part of an index tracking India’s banking sector, early in the day,

2) subsequently place large options trades, betting that the index would decline or volatility would spike later in the day, and

3) later in the day, cash out of the large long positions, dragging the index lower, making far more money on the options trades than on the long positions.

Jane Street can and likely will claim the firm was only arbitraging away pricing inefficiencies, nothing more, nothing less. It was just business as usual, etc., etc.

However, given the scale of the operation, Jane Street's actions sure look like textbook market manipulation. Calling it like I see it.

    > However, given the scale of the operation, Jane Street's actions sure look like textbook market manipulation. Calling it like I see it.

Finally, in my view the India SEBI rules are insanely vague and are written to grant a lot of leeway to the regulator.

The real problem that no one is talking about: Why is India allowing its derivatives markets to explode? An estimated NINETY percent of retail derivs "investors" (I prefer the term "gamblers") lose money in India. Lots of these loses are gains for foreign banks and hedge funds. India: What the hell are you doing!?