The trading on stock exchanges in India used to take place through open outcry without use of information technology for immediate matching or recording of trades. This was time consuming and inefficient. This imposed limits on trading volumes and efficiency. In order to provide efficiency, liquidity and transparency, NSE introduced a nation-wide on-line fully automated screen based trading system where a member can punch into the computer quantities of securities and the prices at which he likes to transact and the transaction is executed as soon as it finds a matching sale or buy order from a counter party. Screen based electronic system electronically matches orders on a strict price/time priority and hence cuts down on time, cost and risk of error, as well as on fraud resulting in improved operational efficiency. It allows faster incorporation of price sensitive information into prevailing prices, thus increasing the informational efficiency of markets. It enables market participants, irrespective of their geographical locations, to trade with one another simultaneous, improving the depth and liquidity of the market.
It provides full anonymity by accepting orders, big or small, from members without revealing their identity, thus providing equal access to everybody. It also provides a perfect audit trial, which helps to resolve disputes by logging in the trade execution process entirety. The sucked liquidity from other exchanges and in the very first year of its operation, NSE became the leading stock exchange in the country, impacting the fortunes of other exchanges and forcing them to adopt SBTS also. Today India can boast that almost 100% trading take place through electronic order matching.
In order to promote dematerialization of securities, NSE joined hands with leading financial institutions to establish the national securities depository Ltd. (NSDL), the first depository in the country, with the objective of enhancing the efficiency in