Last week, the US markets finally moved to the T+1 settlement, two years after the Indian markets did (thanks to SEBI) 😀.

Now, the next thing is moving to instant settlement. The tricky bit is that ~75% of trades are intraday speculative trades. So they would neither have the cash nor the stock with them for instant settlement. If you create another segment for only delivery-based trades, the impact cost due to lower liquidity will be quite high. So yeah, only time will tell.

Crypto exchanges work differently. You must first borrow to short-sell, but the position can be kept forever once you’ve done that. In the Indian markets, you can only short-sell equities for intraday.