Indian Economy Quiz: Commodity Market and Derivatives

A derivative has no independent value of its own; it is a contract whose worth is drawn from the price of something else, which may be a commodity such as gold or crude oil, a share, a stock index, a currency or an interest rate.

An option gives its buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell the underlying asset at the strike price on or before a stated date, and for this right the buyer pays a premium to the seller, who is called the writer.

A call is the right to call the asset away from the seller, that is to buy it, and a buyer purchases a call when he expects the price of the underlying to rise above the strike price.

A future is a standardised contract in which the exchange fixes the quantity, quality, delivery date and delivery centre, both parties deposit margin, positions are marked to market daily and a clearing corporation becomes the counterparty to both sides, so the risk of default is removed.

The Forward Markets Commission was merged with SEBI on 28 September 2015, the Forward Contracts (Regulation) Act of 1952 was repealed by the Finance Act of 2015, and commodity derivatives were brought within the definition of securities under the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956, so SEBI now regulates them.

The Forward Markets Commission was set up in 1953 under that Act, with its office at Mumbai, and it regulated commodity futures trading until its merger with SEBI in 2015, after which the Act itself was repealed.

NCDEX, which began operations in 2003, is the exchange on which farm contracts such as guar seed, chana, castor seed, soybean, mustard, cotton and jeera are traded, and it is the reference point for agricultural futures prices in India.

Organised futures trading in India began with cotton at Bombay in 1875, and the association formed in that year is treated as the first organised futures market of the country; oilseeds, jute and bullion followed in the decades after.

The Authority was created under the Warehousing (Development and Regulation) Act, 2007 to register warehouses and to regulate negotiable warehouse receipts, which allow a farmer to deposit produce in a registered warehouse, receive a receipt, raise a loan against it from a bank and sell the goods later instead of…

Contango is the normal condition of a commodity market, because anyone holding goods until a future date must pay for storage, insurance and interest on the money locked up, and those carrying costs are added to the spot price to arrive at the futures price.

The L. C. Gupta Committee appointed by SEBI recommended the introduction of exchange traded derivatives, the law was amended to include derivatives in the definition of securities, and trading in index futures began on the Indian stock exchanges in June 2000; index options, stock options and stock futures followed in…