Sebi Proposes Usage of Price Data With 30 Day Time Lag For Educational Purposes

Securities and Exchange Board of India has issued a consultation paper on norms for sharing and usage of price data for educational purposes. Market regulator has sought public comments on the its proposal for sharing and usage of price data with 30 day time lag for educational purposes, by January 27, 2026.

Earlier in on December 2, 2025 Sebi passed a significant order against financial ifluencer Avadhut Sathe, impounding around Rs 546 crore earned through his educational platform, Avadhut Sathe Trading Academy (ASTAPL).

Sebi through a circular issued on May 24, 2024 had prescribed time lag of one day for sharing price data for investor education and awareness activities. Another Sebi circular dated January 29, 2025 prescribed that the time lag for usage of price data for investor education and awareness activities to be three months.

As a balancing act after considering stakeholders views and internal assessment Sebi has proposed that a uniform lag of 30 days for both sharing and usage of price data may be made applicable for educational and awareness activities.

"The person engaged solely in education shall continue to abide by the provisions of the prohibited activities in the January 2025 circular and all other provisions of the aforementioned circulars shall remain unchanged," Sebi has proposed.

Using live data for educational purpose is clearly outside the scope of pure educational activity as it involves analyzing current data to predict future prices, which falls under the definition of Investment Advisory (IA) Research Analyst (RA) activity, Sebi consultation paper said.

In the framework prescribed by May 2024 circular, market infrastructure institutions (MIIs) and market intermediaries are prohibited from sharing price data with a lag of less than one day for educational purposes, Sebi said.

In terms of Jan 2025 circular, the persons engaged in education can only use the price data older than three months in their educational content. Thus, pure educational institute can have data with one-day lag so that they can use this for preparing education content. However, they can only use three months old data for educational purpose in the class or through any media, without being falling within the scope of IA/RA activities.

The one-day lag for providing price data for educational purposes is the minimum technical delay to be adhered to by MIIs and market intermediaries, while the three month lag criteria is a content based condition to be adhered to by educators for their content to be regarded as purely educational.

Sebi received stakeholder comments on the time lag of one day being too short, and that there were possible cases of misuse of one-daytime lag data, making out a case for increasing the time lag to a larger period.

"Internally, it was also deliberated that three months lag was too long and that the educational input could be more efficient if the period were to be reduced," Sebi said.

Commenting on Sebi proposals Vijay Sardana, a techno-legal and risk management expert, Supreme Court said " Regulation should be to fill the regulatory vacuum and should also be guided by the relevance of data, not by excessive delay. If market data is too recent, it risks being misused as advice; if it is too old, it loses meaning and fails to explain real market developments. Investor education works best when learners can relate concepts to events they recognize. Sebi’s effort is important because it closes the grey area between education and advisory activity, but the time lag must be balanced and logical. A sensible duration will protect investors, fill the regulatory gap, and still allow meaningful understanding of how markets actually behave.”