How much speculation is there?
In 2025–26 about ₹915 lakh crore changed hands across India's exchanges, counting options by the premium paid. Futures and options took 64% of it and shares 31%. In Sept 2026 NSE's cash market traded ₹1.1 lakh cr a session, and option buyers on NSE and BSE paid ₹15.6 lakh cr in premium over the month.
Written for anyone asking how busy the market is, where the trading happens and who does it. Data to Sept 2026.
Inside its usual range of 52% to 87%. The low is 37%, in February 2014. Up from 55% a year ago.
What it is. A year of share trading as a share of the market's value.
How to read it. How often shares change hands. Very high readings come with speculative phases; low ones with quiet, long-held markets.
Inside its usual range of 0.11× to 0.57×. The record is 1.31×, in March 2023. Down from 0.50× a year ago.
What it is. Premium paid for options in the month, against the value of shares traded.
How to read it. The best single gauge of option speculation. Most option buyers lose money, and SEBI tightened the rules in late 2024 when this kind of activity peaked.
Inside its usual range of 35% to 44%. The record is 51%, in March 2017. Down from 45% a year ago.
What it is. Of the rupees traded in NSE's cash market in the month, the share that ended in shares actually changing owners rather than being squared off the same day.
How to read it. Low readings mean more of the month's trading was bought and sold within the same day; high readings mean more of it was bought to hold.
Each segment's share of the money that changes hands: cash turnover for shares, traded value for futures, premium for options, traded value for bonds and repo. Notional option turnover, the headline figure exchanges print, was about 448 times the premium on NSE in 2025–26, so it is left out here. Since 2015–16, option premium has grown from 2% of the total to 21%.
Share of money traded by financial year, NSE and BSE (currency, commodity, rates and debt are NSE only), from 2015–16, when premium was first published. The latest year is to date.
How to read it. Each column adds to 100%. Follow the option-premium block: it is what option buyers pay, and its rise since 2020 is the options boom measured in money, not in notional exposure.
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Monthly, April 2015 to Sept 2026. NSE serves no wholesale-debt figures for May–December 2019; those months leave that sliver out.
How to read it. Currency, commodity, bonds and repo are thin slivers next to equities. Watch the premium band widen from 2020 and the currency band shrink after April 2024.
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Turnover in rupees sets records whenever the market rises, so it says little on its own. These ratios scale trading by the size of the market or by other trading, and each is placed in its own history. The shaded middle of each strip is the usual range, the middle half of all readings.
Each panel is a segment's last twelve months of trading as a share of its best twelve months so far, so every segment sits on the same 0–100 scale whatever its size. A segment at 100 is at a record. Currency derivatives are at 12% of theirs after the RBI required an underlying exposure from April 2024.
Trailing 12-month money traded as % of the highest trailing 12-month total up to each month, shown from 2015 (records count all history back to each segment's start) to Sept 2026. No later data is used for any month. The gap in wholesale debt is NSE serving no figures for May–December 2019.
How to read it. A line pinned to the top is a segment still growing. A line that falls away and stays low is a segment that has shrunk; a dip that recovers is a quiet year.
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Each chapter answers one part of the question in depth, with every measure the exchanges publish.
NSE against BSE is in the cash chapter and the F&O chapter; the financial-year tables are at the end of each; the headline readings are at the top of each.
Every chart has a table view, a CSV download and a link to its published JSON. Bundles are listed in data status.