Background and Details Revolving Around NSE Colocation
The current and indeed well-known NSE colocation scam relates to the alleged market manipulation at NSE of India. It has been alleged that some of the selected players procured market price info before the rest of market to help them front run the market.
A brief note on the alleged market fraud:
This is as an alleged multi dollar market fraud, which was later proved wrong, came into limelight when the regulator of the markets, SEBI, started receiving anonymous complaints in January 2015 from a whistle blower.
In the letter, it was alleged that the trading members were given the opportunity to capitalize on the advanced colluding knowledge with some of the officials in the exchange department.
The overall default rate of the NSE high frequency trading is stated to be very less in the Indian HFT market. This co-location case is well under investigation by the CBI, SEBI and even the IT department.
All the allegations were later proved to be wrong and illegitimate by various forensic audit reports.
Let us learn more about the colocation facility:
It was in the year 2010 January when NSE first started offering the intelligent co-location facility to the members, which is the beginning of the NSE colocation facility.
Colocation is the facility where the members are given the chance to place their servers in premises of the exchange in return for a selected fee.
This gave them the opportunity to access faster for buying and selling orders after being disseminated by the trading engine of the exchange.
Co-location actually means a proficient setup where the broker’s computer is mainly located in same area as the server of the stock exchange.
Even the retail investors were given the chance to monitor prices as subject to delay when compared to tick by tick data broadcast, which otherwise the user receives in any of the co-location facility.