India. Long on potential but often seen as short on delivery. But that traditional view of the country’s commodity derivatives markets is changing fast. Colin Packham reports on the rapid, if bumpy, ride to success that market participants are enjoying.
What’s all the fuss about India? To understand why many derivative market participants are so excited, you must, like Aurobina Prasad Gayan, chief executive of Mumbai’s KCTL Research, examine the numbers.
“India’s Multi Commodity Exchange ranked first in silver, second in gold and third in crude oil, copper, zinc and natural gas in terms of number of contracts being traded worldwide in 2008,” he says. “MCX also ranks fifth in the top five commodity exchanges in the world.”
And MCX is not even India’s biggest futures and options exchange.
That is the National Stock...