F&O ban list
A stock goes into the F&O ban when open interest across the market crosses 95% of its Market Wide Position Limit, and it comes out when that falls back under 80%. While it is in, nobody may open a new futures or options position in it — only close one. The stock goes on trading in the cash market with half the derivative demand switched off, which is a fact about how it may be traded rather than about what it is worth, and no price chart states it.
The list is the small half. Most sessions ban nobody at all, and the question worth asking the evening before is who is at ninety and climbing. So the ladder below the list carries every F&O name with the share of its limit already used — and how far it moved since the last session, because a name at 88% is a different story depending on whether it was at 70 yesterday or at 94.
The ban list is open to everybody. The ladder behind it — all 210 names, with the move since the last close — is part of the free trial.
Nobody is in the F&O ban this session.
| Company | Limit used | In ban since | Price | Day | 1M | M-cap (Cr) |
|---|
How a stock gets here
Every stock with listed derivatives has a Market Wide Position Limit — a cap on how much of the company can sit in open futures and options positions at once, set at 20% of the free-float shares. The exchange restates the whole book in futures-equivalent shares, because a futures contract and an option are not comparable share for share, and measures that against the limit.
Cross 95% and the name is banned for the next session. It stays banned until the figure falls back under 80%. The gap between the two levels is deliberate: a name released at 94% would be back in on the next tick.
What a ban is, and what it is not
It is not a penalty and it is not a fraud signal. A ban means one thing: too much of the permitted derivative exposure is already taken. That happens to perfectly ordinary companies in the middle of a strong trend, and it happens most often to smaller names, whose limits are smaller.
What it does change is the mechanics. With fresh positions blocked, the people who would normally arbitrage the futures against the cash market cannot put a new trade on, so the basis can drift, spreads widen, and the stock can move further on less. Positions already open may still be closed — which is why a banned name often sees unwinding rather than fresh buying.
Where these numbers come from
Two files, both published by NSE after the close. The ban list itself names the session it binds; the clearing corporation's combined open interest file carries the arithmetic behind it, one row per contract. This page reads both and says so when they disagree.