Until late 2024, one of the most lucrative corners of global finance was a 24-story tower southwest of New Delhi.
Home to at least a half dozen high-speed trading firms, the blue-glass building with a rooftop helipad and a bronze bull sculpture in its plaza has been the center of a trading boom that made India the world’s biggest equity derivatives market by volume. Foreign funds and proprietary traders using algorithms made $7 billion in the 12 months to March 2024 alone.
That bonanza may be coming to an end. On Friday, nine months after the nation’s securities regulator tightened restrictions on options trading to protect retail investors, it accused Jane Street Group — one of the market’s biggest players — of manipulating prices to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten profits.