SEBI capital market glossary: all terms defined

What is SEBI's Glossary of Capital Market, and where does it come from?

It is a single publication, not a living web page. SEBI's Research Division, inside its Research and Training Department, compiled a Glossary of Capital Market in December 2003, and SEBI published it on sebi.gov.in on 23 March 2004. It has not been superseded, revised or reissued since. It sits today under Reports & Statistics on SEBI's site, on a Glossary listing page that carries exactly two entries. The cover page , which holds the compilation credit and a per-letter index, and the glossary itself , an 82-page body attached as a PDF.

That split matters, because the cover-page PDF is six pages of front matter and contains no definitions at all. A reader who opens the first of the two listing entries, sees an index running A to Z with page numbers, and concludes they have found the glossary has in fact found only its table of contents. Every definition on this page comes from the second attachment .

The other structural thing to know before reading it: the glossary is not exclusively Indian. A substantial minority of entries are tagged (U.S.) by SEBI itself (blue sky laws, pink sheets, shelf registration, Regulation T/Regulation U, the SEC, penny stocks, Fortune 500) and describe American market practice. SEBI included them because Indian market participants read American material, not because they state Indian requirements. The tag is SEBI's and it is reproduced faithfully in the index below.

Search the term in the regulation that governs the activity. Takeover, insider trading, LODR, ICDR, intermediaries. Terms such as

acquirer

,

persons acting in concert

,

insider

,

price sensitive information

,

listed company

and

promoter

are all defined in operative instruments. </>), soThat: (<> If yes, the regulation's definition is the one that decides your obligation. Stop here and read the regulation. The glossary entry is still useful for explaining the concept in a training deck or a board note. </>), }, , { ask: "Does the term describe a market mechanism that still exists in India?", check: (<> Carry-forward vocabulary.

badla

,

badliwalas

,

chalu upla

,

kapli

,

sauda book

,

kerb dealings

. Describes a settlement regime the Indian equity market no longer runs. </>), soThat: (<> If it does not, the entry is historical. That is a real use (it decodes old circulars, old annual reports and litigation records) but it is not a description of how anything settles today. </>), }, , ]} conclusion={ <> Use the glossary to make a compliance document

readable

, and the regulation as currently amended to make it

correct

. The two jobs are different and the glossary only does the first. </> } />

A number of the entries connect directly to obligations covered elsewhere in this knowledge base. Where a glossary term is the vocabulary for something that carries a live filing or disclosure duty, the table below points at the guide that sets out the duty.

Sections 2 to 7 pull out the clusters that carry the most working weight, quoting SEBI in full. Section 8 is the complete A. Z index, all entries, unabridged.

Which terms describe how securities are issued?

The primary-market cluster is the part of the glossary that has aged best, because the mechanics of an Indian public issue in 2003 are recognisably the mechanics of one today. Book building, the price band, the red herring prospectus, the basis of allotment, the green shoe option and the book runner all still carry the meanings SEBI recorded here. What has changed is the procedure around them. Timelines, disclosure content and eligibility now sit in the ICDR regulations and the master circular that consolidates them, covered in the ICDR, buyback and ESOP guide .

Two entries in this cluster are worth flagging as vocabulary that is now regulated rather than merely described. Buy back and employee stock option both carry plain descriptive entries here, and both are today governed by detailed SEBI regulations with their own thresholds, tenures and disclosure obligations. See the ICDR, buyback and ESOP guide rather than this page for either.

Which terms describe trading, clearing and settlement?

This is the cluster where the glossary's age is most visible and most useful at the same time. It was compiled at the point where the Indian market had moved to rolling settlement and dematerialisation but the older carry-forward vocabulary was still in living memory, so SEBI defines both regimes side by side. Rolling settlement, dematerialise, ISIN, beneficial owner and depository participant describe the market as it now works. Badla, badliwalas, backwardation/ulta badla, chalu upla, kapli, galla, band ke bhao, sauda book and kerb dealings/khangi bhao describe one that has gone.

• Rolling settlement is defined by cycle length in SEBI's entry, not by a fixed number of days. Which is why the entry survived the market moving from T+3 to T+2 and beyond without becoming wrong.
• Dematerialise and rematerialise are both defined , and the pair is the cleanest short explanation of the depository system SEBI has published.
• Good delivery is a settlement concept , not a logistics one. It concerns whether the security tendered satisfies the obligation, which matters for anyone reading older physical-certificate era records.

Which terms describe SEBI's registered intermediaries?

Every term in this cluster names a category that requires registration with SEBI, which makes it the cluster where the gap between glossary and regulation matters most. The glossary tells you what a merchant banker, a debenture trustee or a registrar to an issue is. It tells you nothing about eligibility, net worth, conduct obligations or the filings each category owes. For that, the intermediary registration map routes from activity to category and names the governing regulation and master circular, and the intermediary compliance calendar sets out what each registered entity files and when.

The central listing authority entry is a similar case: it describes a body contemplated in the early 2000s that did not become the operative mechanism for listing approval. It survives here as a record of what SEBI was designing at the time, which is of historical rather than operational interest.

Which terms describe derivatives, margin and risk?

The derivatives cluster is the most technically durable part of the glossary, because the vocabulary of options, futures and swaps is international and has barely shifted since 2003. An at-the-money option, a straddle, implied volatility and the Black-Scholes model mean now exactly what SEBI recorded then. The risk taxonomy is equally durable and unusually complete: SEBI defines basis risk, counter party risk, settlement risk, systemic risk, liquidity risk, operational risk, legal risk, custody risk, interest rate risk and exchange rate risk as separate entries, which together form a usable risk-register vocabulary in SEBI's own words.

You are handed an archival exchange circular that reads:

"Members carrying open interest beyond the prescribed position limit shall be subject to adhoc margin in addition to daily mark to market margin, computed on a marked to market basis after applying the applicable haircut."

Nothing else is defined in the circular. </> } result={ <> Every operative noun in the clause resolves against a SEBI glossary entry, and the clause turns out to describe an ordinary risk-containment mechanism rather than a penalty. What the glossary cannot tell you is the

number

. The position limit, the margin rate and the haircut percentage were all set by the exchange and are not in this document. </> } >

1. Open interest. The glossary defines it as the outstanding positions in a contract, so the clause is about positions still live, not about trades done.
2. Position limit. A ceiling on the positions a participant may hold, so the trigger is a quantity of exposure rather than a rule breach.
3. Adhoc margin. SEBI's entry describes margin levied on members with unduly large outstanding positions, keeping the risk perspective in view. That confirms the charge is prudential, not punitive.
4. Mark to market margin and marked to market basis. Two separate entries, one the charge and one the valuation method, so the clause is saying the margin is recomputed against current prices.
5. Haircut. The discount applied to the value of collateral, so the computation runs on discounted collateral value rather than face value.

Which terms describe control, governance and market abuse?

This is the cluster to handle with the most care, for two reasons. First, the takeover vocabulary (acquirer, target company, persons acting in concert, public announcement, letter of offer, offer period, control of management) is also defined in the takeover regulations, where the definitions carry numeric thresholds and computation rules that decide whether an open offer is triggered. The glossary version is a plain-English summary and nothing more; the takeover, delisting and control-change guide covers what actually binds.

Second, the market-abuse entries describe conduct, not permission. Insider trading, front running, price rigging, circular trading, pump and dump, churning and wash sales are defined so that participants can recognise them. The obligations that follow (trading windows, structured digital databases, disclosure of trades by designated persons) are in the insider trading regulations, covered in the insider trading guide , and in LODR, covered in the listed-company obligations guide .

One entry in this cluster is worth reading on its own: vanishing companies. It is a distinctly Indian regulatory concern, it has no US analogue in the glossary, and it is the clearest signal in the document of what SEBI's Research Division was preoccupied with in 2003.

Which terms describe funds and collective investment?

The funds cluster splits cleanly in two. One half is the mutual fund vocabulary an ordinary investor meets. Net asset value, open ended and close ended schemes, entry and exit fees, load and no-load funds, switching, growth funds, index funds and sector funds. The other half is the structural vocabulary of pooled vehicles: collective investment schemes, venture capital funds and venture capital undertakings, fund of funds, feeder funds and hedge funds. The second half is the half that maps onto registration categories, which the intermediary registration map routes.

For exporters and other operating companies, the practically relevant entries in the wider glossary are financing rather than fund terms: external commercial borrowings, bankers acceptance, escrow account, forward contract, foreign exchange rate and exchange rate risk. Those are the words that appear in a sanction letter or a hedging mandate. See the export finance guide and the letter of credit guide for how they work in a trade transaction. Companies that borrow through listed debt instead should read the non-convertible securities listing guide and the debt-listed issuer guide , where debenture trustee and trust deed stop being glossary entries and become filing obligations.

A. Z index: every term in SEBI's glossary

All entries, in SEBI's words, in alphabetical order. Terms SEBI tagged (U.S.) keep the tag. Terms that describe market mechanisms India no longer runs are reproduced unchanged rather than removed, because the point of a transcription is to be faithful to the source.

{GLOSSARY_BY_LETTER.map((g) => (

Frequently asked questions

How many terms are in SEBI's Glossary of Capital Market?

This page carries terms, transcribed from the body of SEBI's Glossary of Capital Market as published at sebi.gov.in. SEBI does not itself state a headline count anywhere in the document (the publication opens with a per-letter page index rather than a total) so any number quoted for this glossary is a count of the entries someone actually extracted, not a figure SEBI published. The count varies by a handful depending on how a transcriber treats entries that carry an abbreviation and its expansion on a single line, entries that are pure cross-references such as one that reads only 'See Band Ke Bhao', and entries whose definitions run across a page break. Is the count after merging page-break splits and de-duplicating the two terms that appear twice in the source.

Is SEBI's Glossary of Capital Market still current?

The glossary was compiled in December 2003 and published on sebi.gov.in on 23 March 2004, and SEBI has not replaced it. It remains the only general capital-market glossary SEBI itself publishes, and it sits on SEBI's live Glossary listing under Reports and Statistics. That makes it authoritative as to SEBI's own usage of a term but not authoritative as to current law. A definition here is a description of market vocabulary, not a legal definition. Where a term is also defined in a SEBI regulation (acquirer and persons acting in concert in the takeover regulations, insider and unpublished price sensitive information in the insider trading regulations) the regulation's definition governs and has been amended many times since 2003. Read this glossary to understand what a term means, then read the regulation to find out what it obliges you to do.

Does the SEBI glossary define terms that no longer exist in the Indian market?

Yes, and that is one of its uses. The glossary preserves the vocabulary of the pre-rolling-settlement Indian market, including badla, badla charge or contango, badliwalas, backwardation or ulta badla, chalu upla, kapli, galla, band ke bhao, kerb dealings or khangi bhao, and sauda book. Carry-forward trading of this kind is no longer how the Indian equity market settles, but the terms still appear in older exchange circulars, older annual reports, litigation records and academic work, and a reader who meets them needs a source that says what they meant. The glossary also carries a large set of entries explicitly marked U.S., such as blue sky laws, pink sheets and shelf registration, which describe American market practice rather than Indian law and should never be read as describing an Indian requirement.

Can I cite the SEBI glossary definition of acquirer or insider in a compliance document?

Cite it as vocabulary, not as the operative test. The glossary's entry for acquirer describes any individual, company or other legal entity that intends to acquire or acquires a substantial quantity of shares or voting rights of a target company, or acquires or agrees to acquire control over the target company, along with persons acting in concert. That is a faithful plain-English summary of the concept, and it is useful in a training deck or an internal explainer. It is not the definition that decides whether an open offer is triggered, because the numeric thresholds, the computation rules and the exemptions all sit in the takeover regulations as currently amended, not in a 2003 glossary. The same split applies to insider, price sensitive information, listed company and continuous disclosure. Use the glossary to make a document readable and the regulation to make it correct.

Which SEBI glossary terms matter to an Indian exporter rather than to a securities firm?

A handful, and they are mostly on the financing side rather than the equity side. External commercial borrowings is defined in the glossary in explicitly Indian terms and covers commercial bank loans, buyers' credit, suppliers' credit, securitised instruments and credit from official export credit agencies. The same instrument family an exporter meets when arranging pre-shipment and post-shipment finance. Bankers acceptance, escrow account, forward contract, foreign exchange rate and exchange rate risk are the vocabulary of hedging an export receivable. Credit rating and credit rating agency matter to any company that borrows. Everything else in the glossary (book building, green shoe, rolling settlement, poison pills) becomes relevant to an exporter only if the company itself lists securities, at which point the listed-issuer obligations rather than the glossary are the thing to read.

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Update history

• 2026-08-25 First published.