India’s Securities and Exchange Board (SEBI) has barred a JPMorgan-linked entity and a domestic brokerage firm over alleged manipulation of a new feature in India’s equity markets.

 

In an ex-parte interim order issued by the Indian regulator on Wednesday, Copthall Mauritius Investment Ltd., a Mauritius based company linked to JPMorgan, and Mansi Share and Stock Broking Pvt. Ltd. were found to have distorted prices by placing large, aggressive buy orders during the closing auction session (CAS) on Aug. 13, the same day the BSE Sensex weekly derivatives contract expired.

 

By placing large buy orders in Sensex stocks, the companies were able to push up Sensex prices, benefiting their existing stock holdings. SEBI deemed the actions to constitute market manipulation and fined Copthall Mauritius Investment ₹2.96 crore, or $310,000, and Mansi Share and Stock ₹71.65 lakh, or $75,000, over the alleged gains.

 

“Any manipulation or unfair practices employed to disturb the fair discovery of prices in CAS has to be dealt with sternly by the regulator,” SEBI said, adding that such conduct could “undermine the integrity of the CAS mechanism” and disrupt the orderly functioning of securities markets.

 

CAS: A New Feature in India’s Equity Markets

 

Closing Auction Session, or CAS for short, is a relatively new feature of India’s equity markets that was introduced by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Aug. 3.

 

It replaced the previous Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP) method, improving price discovery so that the closing price of stocks better reflects genuine end of day supply and demand. However, the feature was reportedly manipulated by the two companies in a carefully coordinated scheme, leading to their being barred from participating in the Indian markets.

 

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday approved Nasdaq’s proposal to launch a pilot program for tokenized stock trading.

 

The proposal, first filed in September 2025, sought SEC approval to allow trading of both traditional and tokenized versions of high-volume stocks on the Nasdaq exchange. With the program now approved, traders will be able to trade both traditional stocks and their tokenized counterparts on the Nasdaq. 

 

 

 

These tokenized stocks, according to the approval filing, will trade on the same order book at the same price, under the same ticker, with the same identifying number and rights as their traditional counterparts.

 

The pilot program will not be open to everyone. According to the SEC approval filing, participation will be limited to eligible participants. While Nasdaq has not disclosed the criteria, participants are likely to include Nasdaq-approved broker-dealers and firms approved by the Depository Trust Company (DTC).

 

It is also important to note that these tokenized stocks will be limited to securities in the Russell 1000 index, which tracks the 1,000 largest publicly traded companies in the United States, as well as exchange-traded funds that track the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 indices.

 

 

The Booming Tokenized Stocks Market

The tokenized stocks and equities market has experienced a remarkable surge over the past few months, growing from around $32 million at the start of 2025 to $963 million by January 2026, an increase of approximately 3,000%. 

 

This growth has been attributed to the wider accessibility and faster settlement times offered by tokenized stocks compared with their traditional counterparts.

 

A wave of large fintech and crypto companies has also entered the tokenized equity market. In 2024, the cryptocurrency exchange Robinhood built a custom layer-2 blockchain for tokenization and began offering tokenized U.S. stocks to European users the following year.

 

Other cryptocurrency exchanges, including Kraken, Gemini, and eToro, have also begun offering tokenized U.S. stocks across multiple blockchains, such as Solana, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, and Ethereum. Most recently, Kraken, in partnership with Backed Finance, launched xChange, an on-chain trading engine for tokenized equities.

 

With the rapid attention and growth the tokenized equities market has seen, its market capitalization is projected by multiple research reports to reach trillions of dollars in the coming years.