The National Stock Exchange has climbed to the number-one spot in stock futures contracts in the world, beating South Africa's JSE (formerly the Johannesburg Stock Exchange). NSE launched trading in individual stock futures in November 2001.

In the index futures segment too, NSE is at the number-two slot after Eurex, which is jointly operated by Germany's Deutsche Borse and the SWX Swiss Exchange. Early this year, the Deutsche Borse had bought a 5 per cent stake in NSE's rival in India, the Bombay Stock Exchange.

In stock and index options, however, NSE did not figure among the top-three slots. Interestingly, NSE introduced trading in index futures (June 2000), index options (June 2001), options in individual stocks (July 2001) before introducing stock futures.

The International Securities Exchange of New York topped in the stock options trade (82,862,031 contracts), followed by the Chicago Board of Options Exchange and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (which was recently acquired by Nasdaq).

In index options, the Korea Exchange (205,967,768 contracts) topped the chart, followed by the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the Eurex.

NSE's rise to the number-one slot in stock futures was mainly due to the frequency of stocks added into the F&O segment, said dealers. NSE has been adding more stocks into its derivatives segment in the recent past, from 53 securities in March 2005 to 207 securities.

According to the NSE data, the number of stock futures contracts traded on the exchange in October were 24,008,470 compared with JSE's 8,367,397 contracts in the same period. The Eurex replaced the Euronext Liffe in the third slot with 2,195,807 contracts.

Experts, however, point out that NSE has been able to score over other exchanges due to its smaller contract size. If one takes into account the value of the trades, NSE may be placed lower.

At an average of Rs 1,980 crore (Rs 19.80 billion) a day, the monthly volume in stock futures was much smaller at Rs 43,000-odd crore (Rs 430 billion), said a derivatives analyst of a local brokerage.