BSE president Anand Rathi has been stating time and again his intention to lead the tallies in derivatives segment as well, along with equities.Though the BSE has taken a lead by launching futures trading three days ahead of NSE on June 9, the latter had got ahead of the former in monthly turnovers during the last two consecutive months. During September and October last, the NSE was leading the turnover tallies with Rs 115.35 crore and Rs 15285 crore against BSE's Rs 95.93 crore and 149.86 crore for the two months respectively. However, in terms of volumes of trade (number of contracts traded), BSE retains its lead with 7,892 contracts traded in October end, against 6,658 Nifty contracts in the same month.

The same is the case with total number of contracts traded till now since inception. While 27,123 Sensex contracts were traded till October-end, only 19,309 Nifty contract were traded domestically. The difference in turnover and volumes of trade between the Sensex and Nifty futures was due to the multiples fixed for arriving at the face value of each future, which are 50 and 200 times the respective indices. During the first three months of launch, the Sensex futures have posted a higher turnover when compared to Nifty ones, but the trend changed later in favour of NSE's Nifty futures.

This led to a feeling among the NSE officials that the trend was in their favour and this would continue to be so. A top NSE official, , said "The latest trend shows that we will be leading in this stream as well ." There was a doubt expressed by many market operators that "NSE would take the leadership position sooner than later without making much of a noise", referring to the fanfare with which Sensex futures were launched. On the other hand, NSE made a soft launch of Nifty futures on June 12.The last two months of current year are expected to clinch issue as to who would lead futures trading.