SEBI shares trade logs with Jane Street in market manipulation case

The Securities and Exchange Board of India told a local court that it shared trade logs with Jane Street Group LLC to push the firm to reply to market manipulation claims. Jane Street wants more documents and internal emails to fight the interim order. At a Monday hearing, Jane Street lawyers said SEBI must hand over the records used to accuse the firm of manipulating index prices to profit from options trading. Gaurav Joshi, a lawyer for SEBI, said the regulator already shared details of trade times, quantities, and prices. Joshi said SEBI hid counterparty names and tax IDs and will not share extra info because the probe did not rely on those files. Jane Street argued that most info in the logs was redacted. The trades sit at the heart of allegations that Jane Street swung stock prices in the NSE Nifty Bank Index to help its derivatives bets. Joshi said Jane Street asked for about 60 emails passed between SEBI and the NSE, but SEBI is not legally forced to hand them over. Joshi also stated that Jane Street bought cash stocks worth over 43 billion rupees in two hours and sold options worth more than 320 billion rupees at the same time. Jane Street dumped the shares hours later to help its derivatives position, which SEBI called proof of intent to manipulate the market. SEBI's interim order of July 2025 temporarily barred the firm from trading and told it to put alleged unlawful gains of 48.4 billion rupees into an escrow account. Jane Street deposited the money but has not started trading in India again. Jane Street will give its reply on Thursday.

Context

Market regulators like SEBI keep a close watch on high-frequency trading firms to stop unfair practices that can hurt regular investors. Legal battles over document sharing often happen when firms try to defend themselves against heavy penalties from financial watchdogs.