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In a shocking move that’s rocking the financial world, India has BANNED one of Wall Street’s biggest firms, Jane Street, accusing it of pulling off a sneaky scheme to make billions of dollars—while regular investors lost out.
Jane Street is known for its super-fast, secretive style of trading. Now, India’s market watchdog, called SEBI, says the firm was manipulating India’s stock markets like never before.
How Jane Street Made Billions
Here’s the trick they allegedly used:
- Buy Huge Amounts of Stocks: On important days when trading contracts were about to expire, Jane Street would suddenly buy a massive amount of banking stocks and futures. This made the BANKNIFTY index (which tracks banking stocks) go up fast.
- Secretly Make Profits: As the index went up, Jane Street was secretly selling certain trading contracts (called options) that became super valuable as prices rose.
- Sell Off Stocks: After locking in big profits from those contracts, they’d quickly sell the banking stocks, causing the index to fall again. But by then, they had already made huge money.
They did this over and over, using their advanced computers to trade faster than anyone else.
Just How Big Was This?
SEBI found out Jane Street controlled as much as 10% of the entire BANKNIFTY market at times—enough to control where prices moved!
In total, Jane Street reportedly made:
- $4.3 billion from India between January 2023 and March 2025.
- SEBI has already seized $570 million, saying it was made illegally.
They were making so much money that they even sued another company for copying their India trading strategy! That court case showed Jane Street made $1 billion in India in just one year.
Why India Got Angry
SEBI wasn’t happy. They accused Jane Street of:
- Artificially messing with the market.
- Misleading other investors.
- Hurting small Indian traders who didn’t stand a chance.
India has now banned Jane Street and frozen hundreds of millions of dollars from its accounts. This case has made headlines everywhere, raising concerns about foreign trading companies in India.
Jane Street Fights Back
Jane Street says they didn’t do anything wrong. They claim this was just “smart trading” using legal methods called arbitrage—basically, making money from price differences in the market.
They’re now preparing for a huge legal fight to cancel SEBI’s ban.
Why This Matters
This case has shaken up Wall Street. Many people think India is sending a strong message: Don’t mess with our markets.
As India’s economy grows, it’s attracting more foreign investors—but some people fear there are more firms like Jane Street, ready to take advantage of Indian markets.
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