By Anurag Kumar
US-based trading firm Jane Street has been banned by the Indian market regulator SEBI from trading on Dalal Street for allegedly manipulating index levels on expiry days to gain massive profits in index options. The Wall Street quant trader allegedly made Rs 43,289 crore in options profits while deliberately losing Rs 7,208 crore in futures and equities. The move raised suspicion, and the SEBI dubbed it “systematic market manipulation”. Markets regulator SEBI has accused Jane Street Group – a global trading giant with over 2,600 employees in 45 countries – of orchestrating a sophisticated scheme to manipulate stock prices for massive profits in derivatives trading. The fallout: Rs 4,844 crore in alleged illegal gains frozen, a sweeping market ban, and one of the toughest actions ever taken against a foreign player in India鈥檚 financial markets. Notably, JSI Investments, JSI2 Investments Pvt Ltd, Jane Street Singapore Pte Ltd, and Jane Street Asia Trading of Jane Street Group (JS Group) have been prohibited from the markets. According to an interim order passed by SEBI on Thursday, JS Group entities made over Rs 43,289 crore in profits from index options on NSE from January 1, 2023 to March 31, 2025 across all product categories and segments of NSE. Repeated Warnings Ignored: Sebi Flags Manipulative Expiry-Day TradesSEBI uncovered manipulative trading patterns by the Jane Street Group earlier this year. Despite an explicit caution from the NSE in February 2025 to avoid high-risk index options strategies, JS Group assured compliance. However, by May, the firm resumed aggressive 鈥渕arking the close鈥 tactics on expiry days, allegedly manipulating index levels to their advantage, in direct violation of prior warnings and its own commitments. “Such egregious behaviour, in clear disregard/ defiance of the explicit advisory issued to them by NSE in February 2025, amply demonstrates that unlike the vast majority of Foreign Portfolio Investors and other market participants, JS Group is not a good faith actor that can be, or deserves to be, trusted. “In the face of such a strong prima facie case that allowing the JS Group to continue as before may severely compromise investor protection on an extraordinary scale, Sebi has a duty to directly intervene,” Sebi’s whole time member Ananth Narayan G said in the order. Accordingly, SEBI directed the JS Group to disgorge unlawful gains worth Rs 4,843.57 crore. Get Latest News live on Times Now along with Breaking News and Top Headlines from Business, Companies and around the world.