Mumbai : Atechnical glitch at National Securities Depository (NSDL) resulted in a delay in settlement of trades executed over the past three days. Shares bought by several investors associated with the depository since Tuesday are yet to reflect in their demat accounts, preventing them from selling those holdings, said officials at multiple brokerages on Thursday.

The likely cause is a technical disruption inside NSDL that affected its ability to process inter-depository transfers with its bigger rival, CDSL. Since several trading settlements often require securities to move across the two depositories––a routine process, any snag in NSDL’s inter-depository routing hinders the credit of shares to individual client demat accounts.

As a result, securities have been credited to broker pool accounts but have not been allocated to end-investor demat accounts, leaving clients temporarily unable to trade those holdings, sources said.

“This was not some isolated case; clients of all broking firms face issues because of the issue in inter-depository transfer emanating from NSDL,” said the chief of a brokerage on condition of anonymity.

While brokers did not report similar settlement delays at rival depository CDSL, NSDL is understood to have moved to its Disaster Recovery (DR) site to address the issue. The exact reason behind the snag at NSDL could not be ascertained. Email queries to NSDL remained unanswered until press time.

India’s equity settlement process follows a T+1 cycle. After trades are completed on the exchange, the clearing corporation settles them the next day before 10:30 am by collecting securities and funds from brokers and releasing payouts by the afternoon, around 3:30 pm. After this, depositories credit shares to investors’ demat accounts.
This week, the technical disruption at NSDL delayed this final step.“Due to a glitch on NSDL’s end, inter-depository transfer of shares has been impacted, due to which brokers were unable to complete pay-ins to clearing corporations,” said the chief operating officer of a retail brokerage who did not want to be named.

“Clearing corporations have transferred some shares from CDSL to the brokers’ CDSL Pool account, which ideally should have gone directly to customers’ Demat accounts. NSDL was unable to do BOD (Beginning Of Day) of its systems to the next working day until this afternoon, due to which operations have been delayed.”BOD is the depository’s opening snapshot of the investors’ demat account. If shares aren’t there at the start of the day, investors can’t use or sell them that day.

Mumbai : Better than expected levels in the latest open market operation (OMO) auction of ₹50,000 crore triggered a rally in bond yields, as the 10 year benchmark yield closed at 6.65%, four basis points lower than its previous close, CCIL data showed.

The OMO received bids of ₹87,161 crore, and three out of the seven bonds in the auction were accepted at lucrative levels than market prices, treasury heads said.

The 7.18% GS 2033 paper saw the most demand, with ₹26,406 crore offered, of which the RBI accepted ₹20,346 crore. While the 6.92% GS 2039 paper saw the least demand with markets offering ₹1,999 crore, of which the RBI accepted ₹1,780 crore.

“The OMO was definitely better than expected and as soon as the cut off prices were released, the 10-year paper saw a rally. The RBI took some bonds at lucrative levels than the market, especially the 6.33% GS 2035 paper,” said Gopal Tripathi, head of treasury at Jana Small Finance Bank.
The price of 6.33% GS 2035 paper was trading at 97.97, while the RBI accepted the paper at 98.18.

Similarly the 6.28% GS 2035 paper was trading at a price of 98.68, while the RBI accepted the paper at 98.73, CCIL and RBI data showed.
The OMO auction was part of the RBI’s recent liquidityinfusing measures and marked the final operation in the current OMO calendar.
Experts do not expect additional steps in the near term, as system liquidity is likely to move into a comfortable surplus once the proceeds from this OMO auction are fully infused into the banking system.
“I do not expect any immediate announcement on liquidity in the policy on Friday. With this OMO auction, the system liquidity will be around ₹2.50 lakh crore. Additionally, the pressure on rupee is lifted after the trade deal, hence outflows via intervention, if any, would be minimal” Tripathi said.

Banking system liquidity stood at a surplus of ₹1.95 lakh crore on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump unveiled TrumpRx.gov, a new government-backed website aimed at giving Americans access to discounted prescription drugs.

Speaking at the website launch Thursday evening at the White House, Trump argued that Americans have long paid far more for prescription drugs than consumers in other countries and called the price differences unprecedented.

“Americans have long been paying the highest drug prices anywhere in the world, while other countries often paid pennies on the dollar for the exact same drugs,” Trump said. “We were essentially subsidizing the entire world by hundreds of billions of dollars every year.”

He added that despite accounting for a small share of the global population, Americans bear a disproportionate share of drug costs.

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“The United States is just 4% of the world’s population and consumes only 13% of all prescription drugs,” he said before confirming new agreements would change that dynamic.

“Under the agreements my administration has negotiated, the United States will pay the lowest price paid by any other country,” he said. “We’re taking the lowest price anywhere in the world. That’s the price you’re going to be paying,” Trump added.

“They’re going way down for the United States — by differences of as much as 300, 400, 500, even 600%” Trump said. “In some cases, even more.”

Trump announced the website at a White House event alongside Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and National Design Studio Director Joe Gebbia, the Airbnb co-founder advising the administration on digital design and user experience.

The initiative follows agreements between the Trump administration and 16 of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies under so-called “most-favored-nation” pricing deals.

“All of these discounts and more will be available directly to consumers starting today at TrumpRx.gov,” Trump said, adding that 16 of the 17 largest pharmaceutical companies have signed on, with the remaining company expected to join.

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In exchange for exemptions from U.S. tariffs, participating drugmakers agreed to lower prices for the federal Medicaid program and extend those reduced prices to cash-paying consumers through TrumpRx.

Among the participating companies are Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, which agreed to cut prices on popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs.

The administration said the agreements are expected to reduce monthly costs for Americans to an average range of $149 to $350.

The administration highlighted price reductions across a range of medications, including inhalers, HIV treatments, diabetes drugs and IVF medications.

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Trump cited reductions in weight-loss drugs and inhalers, as well as fertility treatments.

“Novo Nordisk will be slashing the price of Wegovy from more than $1,300 to $199,” Trump said. “AstraZeneca is slashing the price of a common inhaler from $458 to $51.”

“We’re also delivering historic discounts for couples struggling with infertility,” he added, saying manufacturers would dramatically cut the cost of commonly used IVF drugs, including Gonal-F.

The TrumpRx.gov displays discounted prescription drugs, showing users the percentage savings off the original price and generating a coupon for each medication.

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Consumers can print the coupon or save it to a mobile wallet and present it at participating pharmacies to receive the discount at checkout. For specialty drugs, the site directs users to mail-order pharmacies that can deliver medications directly to their homes.

According to administration officials, purchases made through the website will generally not count toward insurance deductibles.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Thursday proposed tightening margin rules for a trading strategy in single-stock derivatives.

Under the proposal, the benefit of offsetting positions across different expiries will not be available on the day of expiry for singlestock derivative contracts expiring that day.

The review follows feedback from market participants flagging potential risks arising from calendar-spread benefits on expiry days for single-stock contracts. A calendar spread is when a trader holds the same stock’s derivatives with two different expiry dates, which lowers margin because the positions offset each other. The risk appears on expiry day when the near-month contract expires and the hedge no longer exists. This leaves the trader exposed to one-way moves on the remaining position.

“It is clarified that the existing margin calculations for calendar-spread positions shall remain unchanged for calendar-spread positions involving all expiries other than the contracts expiring on a given day,” Sebi said in a circular. The new rule will take effect three months from the date of the circular.

Currently, for index derivatives, calendar-spread benefits are already unavailable on the day of expiry for contracts maturing that day.

Sebi said the proposal would align the treatment of calendar spreads in single-stock derivatives with that of index derivatives and give trading members sufficient time either to bring in additional margin on expiry day or roll over positions.
“In the absence of such formulation, there remains a risk of sudden increase in margin on the day following expiry of one leg of the calendar-spread position, with limited recourse available to trading members in case of margin shortfall or an open leg showing significant adverse price movement,” it added.