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- Sun, 14 December 2025
SEBI has alleged that four entities under the Jane Street Group were manipulating the market, placing big, fast, and aggressive trades in index options, especially during the expiry sessions of Bank Nifty and Nifty, making it seem like there was a lot of activity and liquidity in the market.
SEBI’s investigation found that these tactics seriously distorted market prices, especially around the time contracts were being settled.
These trades took place over 18 days and are believed to have disturbed the market and unfairly tilted things in the firm’s favour.
Jane Street allegedly earned illegal profits of Rs 4,843 crore (about $570 million) through these actions. As part of the probe, SEBI has ordered this money to be placed in an escrow account, with a lien in its favour, to ensure it can be recovered if needed.
Jane Street Group is an active global proprietary trading firm that acts as a liquidity provider, using advanced data analysis and a strong grasp of how markets work to help keep prices stable and accurate.
According to SEBI, Jane Street used a strategy called “Intra-day Index Manipulation” to influence the closing price of Bank Nifty on expiry day.
To explain this, SEBI pointed to what happened on January 17, 2024. That day, Bank Nifty opened much lower, dropping from 48,125.10 to 46,573.95.
News reports said this fall may have been due to the market reacting negatively to HDFC Bank’s earnings, which were announced the day before.
But despite the falling market, Jane Street (JS Group) aggressively bought Bank Nifty stocks in both the cash and futures markets, spending ₹4,370.03 crore, which was much higher than usual trading activity.
SEBI said these aggressive purchases pushed prices up.
Because of this price rise, Put options (which profit when prices fall) became cheaper, and Call options (which profit when prices rise) became more expensive. At the same time, Jane Street took big short positions: betting the market would fall.
Later in the day, the firm sold off most of the stocks it had bought earlier, which pulled prices back down. As prices dropped again, Put options became more valuable, and Call options lost value—undoing the price changes from earlier. This back-and-forth move allowed Jane Street to benefit from the price swings it helped create.
In April 2024, SEBI began its analysis after media reports surfaced about a legal dispute involving Jane Street Group. The reports claimed that the firm had allegedly used its proprietary trading strategies in the Indian markets without proper authorisation.
By December 2024, a team was constituted to further examine various manipulative trends in detail.
On 6th February 2025, a caution letter was sent to Jane Stree Group by SEBI.
On May 15th, it was noticed that Jane Street was continuing its previous trends.
On July 3rd, the interim report was released.
Credit for header image: GFT
[This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. This has been constituted based on third-party sources. We do not assume any liability for actions taken based on this information.]
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