US trading firm Jane Street barred from securities mkt over ‘stock manipulation’

What is Jane Street?

- Bloomberg

Indian regulators have temporarily barred US securities trading company Jane Street from accessing the local securities market for alleged index manipulation, dealing a severe hit to the firm, which made $4.3 billion in trading gains there in less than two years.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said it would seize $570 million (₹4,843 crore) from Jane Street, which it claimed is the total amount of “unlawful gains” made by the firm, according to a 105-page interim order by Ananth Nar-ayan, a board member at the regulator, on its website. Jane Street said it disputes the findings.

The investigation will expand to include other major stock indexes, including the Nifty 50 and Sensex, over the coming months, a Sebi official said, without providing a timeline of when the probe will end.

Jane Street is one of the most active foreign players in India, the world’s largest derivatives market by contracts traded, and one that has become a magnet for high-frequency trading firms amid a retail investing boom sparked by the pandemic. Sebi’s order marks a rare instance of such action against a foreign firm.

The US-based market maker's operations in India came under a global spotlight last year after a court battle with Millennium Management revealed it earned $1 billion trading in Indian equity derivatives.

Other details disclosed in the case helped trigger Sebi's investigation, which continued even as the National Stock Exchange of India earlier this year closed a separate probe into irregular trades by the firm.

Jane Street made about $4.3 billion (₹36,671 crore, according to Sebi) in overall gain from trading in Indian derivatives and cash market during the period between January 2023 and March 2025, according to the SEBI order.