The exchange has devised three products for a start -- one-month, two-month and three-month futures. The final settlement for each of these products would be on the last Friday of the concerned month.

The LC Gupta committee had stipulated a minimum duration of a month and a maximum period of a year on which a futures contract could be modelled."We, however, feel that initially the market may not be able to visualise a position on the market beyond three months. This may lead to no contracts being entered into for periods beyond three months. It is for this reason that we have decided to, for a start, restrict the futures period to three months till the concept catches on," said NSE managing director RH Patil.The decision to restrict the futures period to three months will be ratified by the executivecommittee of the bourse for derivatives which is slated to be set up soon.

On the margins front, NSE will work out the details of the quantum of margins that would be collected from members. The extent of margins would be determined broadly, in keeping with a formula that has been spelt out in the LC Gupta committee.

In the futures segment, margins would be marked to market. These would be paid upfront and payable daily.

The margins will not be netted if one client of a broker has opened a position and another has closed a similar amount of positions. Instead, both would be considered as open positions and margins will be collected on both to provide a comfort level to the investor.

The NSE board had cleared the membership requirements for the index futures sub-segment on Wednesday. All existing members can become trading members for the sub-segment as they have the minimum stipulated net worth of Rs 1 crore.

The net worth for clearing members has been fixed at Rs 3 crore. The transaction chargesfor this segment have been fixed at Rs 2 for every lakh worth of trades carried out. This is significantly lower than the figure of Rs 9 per lakh in the physical cash segment and Rs 5 per lakh in the demat segment.