Regulating High-Frequency And Arbitrage Trading In India: SEBI's Actions Against Jane Street And The Evolution Of Market Integrity
- IJLLR Journal
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
Deepansh Sthapak, Christ University, Bangalore
ABSTRACT
High-frequency trading and sophisticated arbitrage strategies have left a deep mark on India's securities market. They have improved market depth and execution speed, but they have also exposed gaps in how the law handles market integrity, investor protection, and systemic risk. SEBI's interim action against the jane street group, which was accused of index manipulation and aggressive expiry-day strategies, represents a pivotal moment in how India thinks about advanced trading and market abuse. this paper takes a doctrinal and policy-focused approach, using the jane street episode as a lens to test the limits of current law and supervision. it grapples with three core tensions. first, whether the existing regulatory perimeter under the SEBI act, the SCRA, and SEBI circulars adequately covers algorithmic and cross-market arbitrage. second, how these strategies distribute gains and losses across market participants, particularly retail investors. third, the liquidity-fairness trade-off, where efficiency gains sit uneasily alongside volatility, opacity, and unequal access to technology. drawing on SEBI materials, exchange data, and comparative practice from the USA, EU, and UK, this paper proposes a hybrid regulatory model. that model would include clear statutory definitions of HFT and algorithmic activity, direct accountability for significant algo providers, stronger expiry-day safeguards, technology-enabled surveillance and audit trails, and upgraded index governance. the framework proposed here is forward-looking and risk-based. it borrows from global best practice but is tailored to India's market, which is characterized by high retail participation, index-heavy derivatives activity, and a relatively small number of dominant exchanges. the jane street episode is treated not as an outlier but as a formative moment in the maturation of India's financial regulatory state, one that calls for anticipatory, data-driven, and enforceable rules.
Keywords: High-frequency trading, Arbitrage, SEBI, Market manipulation, Index governance, Algorithmic trading, Investor protection.
