A display screen reveals the Dow Jones Industrial Common after the shut of buying and selling on the ground on the New York Inventory Trade after the closing bell in New York Metropolis, U.S., April 4, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
The road between arbitrage and market manipulation has lengthy been one of many greyest areas in monetary markets — and India’s current motion towards high-frequency buying and selling big Jane Road has introduced this murky boundary into sharp focus.
Arbitrage, at its core, is like recognizing a mismatch and making an attempt to make a revenue out of it — and it’s completely authorized. It refers back to the simultaneous shopping for and promoting of an asset in several markets to use worth variations.
Market manipulation, against this, is an unlawful act designed to deceive or distort the free and truthful operation of markets — sometimes by influencing costs or deceptive appearances of provide and demand for unfair benefit.
However when does arbitrage edge into illegality?
Based on specialists whom CNBC spoke to, the excellence hinges on intent and market affect.
should you’re the one pushing costs out of alignment — particularly in much less liquid markets — to revenue on the opposite facet, then that is manipulation.
Pradeep Yadav
finance professor on the College of Oklahoma
On July 3, India’s Securities and Trade Board (SEBI) quickly blocked Jane Road Group from collaborating within the nation’s securities markets, accusing the U.S. high-frequency buying and selling agency of large-scale market manipulation. This contains ways to govern India’s Nifty 50 index with a view to revenue from sizable positions in index choices.
Based on SEBI’s 105-page interim order, the agency allegedly purchased giant volumes of shares and futures tied to the Nifty Financial institution Index, which tracks the efficiency of India’s banking sector, through the early hours of buying and selling. It then positioned vital wagers anticipating a decline within the index later within the session. SEBI added that Jane Road subsequently bought off these earlier purchases, pushing the index decrease and growing the profitability of its choices positions. The regulator argued that this was a part of a “deliberate technique to govern indices” for the good thing about its bigger and extra profitable choices bets.
SEBI mentioned that the depth and sheer scale of the intervention, coupled with the speedy unwinding of positions “with none believable financial rationale,” was deemed manipulative.
Jane Road disputed the findings of SEBI’s interim order, informing workers in an inner e mail that it deliberate to problem the ban whereas claiming that its actions had been “primary index arbitrage buying and selling.”
The buying and selling agency would later deposit $567 million into an escrow account on July 14, as directed by SEBI, not earlier than requesting permission to renew buying and selling within the nation and the lifting of restrictions.
The important thing: mens rea
Because the authorized back-and-forth commences, trade veterans mentioned the distinction between authorized arbitrage and unlawful manipulation is not all the time clear-cut.
The intention behind wrongdoing in trades — often called mens rea, which suggests “responsible thoughts” in Latin — is essential to figuring out manipulation, mentioned Pradeep Yadav, finance professor on the College of Oklahoma. He additionally identified that creating an arbitrage alternative by influencing costs in a much less liquid market is what crosses the road into illegality.
“Arbitrage turns into market manipulation if you find yourself creating the arbitrage by manipulating the much less liquid facet of the market,” he mentioned, explaining that the choices market in India may be very liquid because of the massive quantity of patrons and sellers. Nevertheless, the nation’s spot and futures markets are much less so, which renders it simpler to push costs by putting giant sufficient trades.
This sort of arbitrage, whereas aggressive, is authorized and infrequently useful to market effectivity.
V Raghunathan
Former SEBI board member
SEBI’s case hinges on two claims. First, Jane Road deliberately distorted the much less liquid money market to revenue on the extra liquid choices market. Certainly, SEBI, in its interim order towards Jane Road, cited an earlier judgement from a case, “No one deliberately trades for loss. An intentional buying and selling for loss per se, is just not a real dealing in securities.”
Second, that its earnings got here fully from choices, with constant losses in shares and futures, suggesting the trades had been designed to maneuver costs slightly than mirror real market views.
“Mens rea is the demonstration of in poor health intent to govern the market… if costs are already misaligned, arbitraging them is ok. However should you’re the one pushing costs out of alignment — particularly in much less liquid markets — to revenue on the opposite facet, then that is manipulation,” mentioned the professor, who added that in a standard arbitrage state of affairs, the dimensions of 1’s inventory commerce and their choices commerce could be proportional. The imbalance, in his view, steered it was not a case of basic arbitrage.
Different specialists additionally emphasised that the positive line between market manipulation and arbitrage lies in intent.
Nevertheless, V Raghunathan, a former SEBI major market board member, believes that Jane Road’s actions had been inside the authorized realm. Jane Road thrives in exploiting minute inefficiencies — for instance, in ETF pricing versus underlying securities, or between exchanges, he mentioned.
“This sort of arbitrage, whereas aggressive, is authorized and infrequently useful to market effectivity,” he informed CNBC.
He cited the instance of latency arbitrage — the place companies revenue from tiny time delays in market information throughout venues — as being criticized as parasitic or predatory, however hardly unlawful.
That mentioned, Raghunathan famous that the broader concern is whether or not Jane Road’s methods got here near manipulation — in both intent or the letter of the legislation.
Like different specialists whom CNBC spoke to, Raghunathan established market manipulation as intentionally deceptive or influencing costs and buying and selling volumes to create synthetic developments or unfair benefits, akin to pump-and-dump schemes and wash buying and selling.
“In brief, until Jane Road is discovered to be putting misleading orders, like spoofing, abusing confidential info, or manipulating costs to create synthetic strikes — none of which it has been accused of — it might not be thought-about to have engaged in market manipulation,” he mentioned.
Paul Rowady, director of analysis at Alphacution Analysis, mentioned that the strains between manipulation and arbitration additionally rely upon the regulator’s tooth. Within the U.S., comparable allegations would hinge on whether or not a agency engaged in spoofing or deception.
“Buying and selling aggressively is just not against the law,” he mentioned.
Market watchers additionally echoed that the Jane Road case spotlights the vulnerabilities of India’s market construction — together with liquidity imbalances between spot and choices markets — which refined gamers can legally exploit however which regulators might now search to tighten.
Based on SEBI, a current research of 9.6 million particular person fairness spinoff merchants revealed that 91% misplaced cash final yr.
As a former U.S. SEC litigator, Howard Fischer places it, arbitrage is akin to “taking a look at one’s neighbor’s home, seeing he retains stacks of newspapers and lit candles all over the place, and taking out fireplace insurance coverage on his house.”
“Manipulation is giving him a July 4th current of firecrackers and propane tanks,” Fischer, who’s now a accomplice at legislation agency Moses & Singer, mentioned.
The excellence lies in intent: arbitrage exploits inefficiencies; manipulation tries to fabricate them.
