With lakhs of retail option traders listening to Sebi chief on the comments around ending of weekly expiry, Pandey said the regulator will float a consultation paper regarding the same as and when ready. Sebi has been cracking down on the options market since the past one year after multiple surveys pointed to heavy retail losses.

In a press conference after the board meeting, Pandey said that there will be a consultation paper and participants will be informed in due course.

“Will inform all participants transparently on the weekly option decision,” he said. The Sebi chairman also said that the regulator will decide on any rules post floating consultation paper by following due process.

Sebi first floated the idea of extending the maturity and tenure of derivative contracts last month. The regulator has recently rolled out a fresh set of measures to strengthen the market including moving to a delta-based calculation of open interest as opposed to notional open interest.

This measure has an impact on all the large market participants and could potentially make a longer-term impact on volumes and reduce volatility in the market.

Sebi has also notified fresh changes to market wide position limits (MWPL), pre-open and post-market sessions for the F&O segment and also change in eligibility criteria for derivatives on non-benchmark indices.The regulator, through a six-step framework, brought in various checks late last year that ranged from increasing the contract size of options to limiting weekly expiries to one per exchange. These rules were introduced after a study found that retail traders gambled their savings in these volatile trades over the last three years and lost nearly Rs 1.8 lakh crore.Starting this September, exchanges NSE and BSE have swapped weekly expiries, a move that was seen at further boosting the options market. In a bit of a surprise, this resulted in a slim market share gain for BSE and premium average daily turnover jumped 19% to Rs 20800 crore.

Despite the measures hitting traders, experts hailed the consultative approach taken by the regulator.

The regulator late Friday announced a series of reforms, aimed at easing minimum offer norms for large IPOs, making it easier of NSE and Reliance Jio to float their issues. Under the new framework, companies with over Rs 5 lakh crore market cap now offload a minimum 2.5% stake to investors as against 5% earlier. Sebi has also relaxed rules for foreign investors entering Indian markets in a board meeting.