Blowing the Whistle on Manipulation in NSE
We are crowd-sourcing investigation on a whistleblower account detailing how NSE’s system has been exploited. Please use the comment section to share your information
 
High-frequency trading using colocation that give traders advantages by a few milliseconds have come to occupy the centerstage of equity markets all over the world. Such automated trading, which executes pre-programmed instructions, generating thousands to millions of trades every trading day come out of black boxes designed by whiz kids in the secret corners of trading firms. If deployed unfairly, a tiny unfair advantage can translate into crores of rupees of illegal profit. 
 
Moneylife has repeatedly argued that India has no system of monitoring complex automated systems, leave along trading transaction. Consequently, organisations that operate such technology have become a law unto themselves, supervised by nobody. Even when there is a major glitch or a fat finger trade, no report is put into the public domain. 
 
So, if HFT trades are done illegally, they fly below radar and very few people about them. Fortunately, we have in our possession a detailed document that blows the whistle on what’s possibly going on in NSE. The document below was came by snail mail from Singapore and addressed to Mr B K Gupta, DGM Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). It is dated 14th January 2015 with a copy to Sucheta Dalal. It is not clear what SEBI has done with it in all these months.
 
Moneylife has written to the SEBI Chairman, the chairman of National Stock Exchange, Ravi Narain, and managing director of NSE, Ms. Chitra Ramakrishnan, asking whether they have acted on this document. Our letters and text messages have been met with complete silence. In trying to get to the bottom of this over the last two months, we have shared this document with the exchanges, regulators, government agencies and key traders. We realised that the only people who can throw light on it are actual HFT players who understand how this game is played.
 
Hence we are putting out this long document to crowd source informed opinion and facts on this. Hopefully, your information will stir the investigative agencies into looking deeper into it. After reading this document, post your facts and information below. You need not use your actual identify. Your data is secure with us. If you want to write with specifics, please write to [email protected] or [email protected]
 
Comments
piyush kumar pathak
6 years ago
i am sure with my strongest gut feel there is a big fraud on very very small HFT manipulations these should be reported to SFIO of Ministry of corporate affairs
Radhakrishnan Ramachandra
7 years ago
Hi - I'm a victim of nse intraday manipulation - I was having account with Axis Securities. Went upto NSE IRGP and now in arbitration stage. Mr Raghunath Rakesh of NSE Bangalore says that they (NS) cannot investigate system related manipulation and that I need to approach Cyber Crime dept. They hv disposed my case with nil compensation, but there is no written mention of them asking me to approach Cyber Crime. NSE is not taking my problem seriously at all. That is the problem. When I first lodged complaint with SEBI they referred it to NSE. NSE is not of any help. NSE's IRGP / Arbitration are all not going to yield any result - its like going through the motion. Does it point to nexus. We need to really go to the bottom come to fight for justice.
Sucheta Dalal
8 years ago
Whistleblowers would be more valuable if they were in touch ...
Watching from a distance, jumping to conclusions about "self-imposed gags" and remaining silent when writers to battle is disappointing!!

Technology allows many ways of ensuring confidential communication.

A techie should know that!
Anbalagan Veerappan
Replied to Sucheta Dalal comment 7 years ago
Sent an email in detail adding more inputs to this.
V ganesan
8 years ago
I WOULD LIKE TO MENTION ONE EVENT HAPPENED RECENTLY IN LAST WEEK 13 TH OF AUGUST THURSDAY I WAS IN MY BROKER OFFICE. Suddenly in the after noon BOTH canara bank and bank of baroda
shoots up suddenly with heavy volume with in minutes. The next day also uptrend continues.On friday evening 14th august news about banking reforms out after market hours. THIS CLEARLY SHOWS INSIDER TRADING SOME PEOPLE KNOWS ABOUT THIS ONE DAY PRIOR TO THE ANNOIUNCEMENT.SEBI SHOULD INVESTIGATE THE PEOPLE WHO BOUGHT SHARES IN EQUITY AND F AND O SECTION AND BLOCK THE MONEY THEY MADE BY WAY OF PROFIT
Prashant
8 years ago
Pls watch related documentry. Its happening everywhere and no one is able to stop it :-

https://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFQJNeQDDHA
Veeresh Malik
8 years ago
I guess an update is called for?

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/i...

""NSE cannot use defamation to gag the press: Bombay HC
A single bench of the high court said this while hearing a Rs 100-crore defamation case filed by NSE against Moneylife magazine.""
Low Latency Trader
8 years ago
It is an open secret within the industry that OP Gupta had connections within the NSE (via Jagdish Joshi) to get the faster tick-by-tick feeds.

Any other algo player looking to get into the space was at a severe disadvantage.
Incomebuilder
8 years ago
You also need to investigate the dividend stripping that the mutual funds facilitate for large corporates in connivance with big institutional distributors.
Just look at all the mutual funds which have declared dividend in March end and the corresponding spike in AUM three months prior.
Best of the so called ethical fund houses indulge in these activities every year. Just by stopping bonus option AMFI has tried to prevent bonus stripping but what about dividend stripping which has resulted in loss of revenue to govt and unfair advantage to select few.
Sunil Krishnan
8 years ago
Will SEBI pursue the matter seriously to prove / disprove the details offered and beyond? Will authorities at NSE be held accountable if the account given in the letter is proved? What was the extent of profiteering from such trades? What has NSE done after it hushed up the case to make its systems foolproof? Will all those who were a part of this be pursued for financial crimes? Do our trading systems really offer a level playing field to market participants? Sunil Sivaramakrishnan
shivkumar
8 years ago
Kudos Sucheta, only you can expose the nefarious activities of a "reputed body" like the NSE.

More strength to your Pen.
Ashok Visvanathan
8 years ago
Once you login first to a server , you stay first in the list till the end of day. The nse can every 10 minutes or so rotate the priority list at each server, so that any advantage a person has will be only for 10 minutes and they wont know when their 10 minutes is coming.
manoharlalsharma
8 years ago
Trics to profit r BUZZ word / GAME played to attract lay investors is a conman practice in all the INDIAN markets.
Deepak vohra
8 years ago
Yes, this may be going on. I am a trader from last 17 years, many times it seems that there is manipulations in rates with help of technology. Even many times there are bulk of buyers N sellers stand for long time but ur trade will not happen and interestingly heavy volume generation is going on. The last experience was fortis when stock hit for freeze and our screen showing rates 3 to 4% down. And next day we come to know Mr. Jhunjhunwala bought big quantity, that was 11 feb may be...
Suketu Shah
8 years ago
Great article.Once again if it was not for moneylife we would never know.Well done.
Sairam Sriram
8 years ago
Quite a bunch of garbage here. Looks like some one from outside of HFT firm has written this article as well as pdf.

There is literally no way to implement what is being said unless someone has done this via programming code. TCP or Multicast, as far as I know, variation has always been in NSE and all other exchanges.

Looks like the HFT firm was a beginner in doing low latency stuff - couldn't crack basic low latency TCP. I also recommend reading Richard Stevens.
Debashis Basu
Replied to Sairam Sriram comment 5 years ago
Hey I was just curious. What do you recommend now? In case, you have not been living in Mars :))
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