National Stock Exchange : India's Lifeline
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When India’s National Stock Exchange (NSE) was started in 1994, few believed it would survive. How could a stock exchange run by a team of untested professionals headed by a former development banker succeed against existing stock exchanges run by third generation, savvy stockbrokers?
Critics even went to the extent of warning that NSE’s sophisticated systems would be a misfit in an Indian capital market dominated by physical deliveries, arbitrary speculative trade, and lengthy trade settlements.
Today, with number of trades touching 2.5 million a day and turnover touching turnover touching Rs 100 billion in value terms, NSE towers over all the other stock exchanges in the country.
In a ten-year period (NSE completed a decade on June 30, 2004) the National Stock Exchange has tilted the market system in favour of investors and away from a significant bias in favour of intermediaries. For a mass of investors across the country, the NSE is now the focal point for trading in stocks, and futures and options.