Position Limits

Clearing Members are subject to the following position limits in addition to initial margins requirements.

• Market Wide Position Limits (for Derivative Contracts on Underlying Stocks)
• Trading Memberwise Position Limit
• Client Level Position Limits
• FII/MF position limits

Market Wide Position Limits (for Derivative Contracts on Underlying Stocks)

At the end of each day the Exchange disseminates the aggregate open interest across all Exchanges in the futures and options on individual scrips along with the market wide position limit for that scrip and tests whether the aggregate open interest for any scrip exceeds 95% of the market wide position limit for that scrip. If yes, the Exchange takes note of open positions of all client/ TMs as at the end of that day in that scrip, and from next day onwards the client/ TMs should trade only to decrease their positions through offsetting positions till the normal trading in the scrip is resumed.

The normal trading in the scrip is resumed only after the aggregate open interest across Exchanges comes down to 80% or below of the market wide position limit.

A facility is available on the trading system to display an alert once the open interest on the NSE in the futures and options contract in a security exceeds 60% of the market wide position limit specified for such security. Such alerts are presently displayed at time intervals of 10 minutes.



Trading Memberwise Position Limit

The trading member-wise position limit in equity index option and index futures is as under:

Index Futures
The trading member position limits in equity index futures contracts is higher of Rs.500 crores or 15% of the total open interest in the market in equity index futures contracts. This limit is be applicable on open positions in all futures contracts on a particular underlying index.

Index Options
The trading member position limits in equity index option contracts is higher of Rs.500 crores or 15% of the total open interest in the market in equity index option contracts. This limit would be applicable on open positions in all option contracts on a particular underlying index

Futures and Option contracts on individual securities :
The trading member-wise position limit in futures and options in individual stocks is related to the market-wide position limit for the individual stocks.

i. For stocks having applicable market-wide position limit (MWPL) of Rs. 500 crores or more, the combined futures and options position limit is 20% of applicable MWPL or Rs. 300 crores, whichever is lower and within which stock futures position cannot exceed 10% of applicable MWPL or Rs. 150 crores, whichever is lower.

ii. For stocks having applicable market-wide position limit (MWPL) less than Rs. 500 crores, the combined futures and options position limit is 20% of applicable MWPL and futures position cannot exceed 20% of applicable MWPL or Rs. 50 crore which ever is lower.


Client Level Position Limits

The gross open position for each client, across all the derivative contracts on a underlying, should not exceed:

- 1% of the free float market capitalization (in terms of number of shares)
or
- 5% of the open interest in all derivative contracts in the same underlying stock (in terms of number of shares)

whichever is higher

Client level position limits underlying-wise, are available to members on NSE's website.