Mumbai, April 15 :    Mumbai, April 15:  Refco-Sify Securities India, a joint venture between Refco Group LLC of USA and Satyam Infoway, is eyeing the nascent index futures trading in the country. Trading in index futures provides investors with a hedging platform. Refco-Sify Securities will offer internet trading facilities for online and offline equity and futures trading for retail customers as well as execution and clearing services for financial institutions. 'This is our core strength,' Vineet Bhatnagar, managing director of Refco-Sify Securities said. The joint venture plans to launch its online initiative early next month, he said. Worldwide, Refco is a big name in futures broking. The Refco group ranks as the world's largest non-bank futures commission merchant, with nearly $ 3.3 billion in global client equity and is the sixth largest futures firm, Bhatnagar said. The Indian outfit has an authorised capital of $ 10 million. The shenanigans of several leading market players has seen shareholder wealth more than halve, with practically every sector facing the music, and market capitalisation dip from the peak of over Rs 5,00,000 crore recorded last year, to a little less than Rs 2,40,000 crore now. Significantly, while volumes have dried up in spot transactions as investors helplessly watch index heavyweights take a sharp plunge, volumes in the shallow index futures market have dried up as well. Index futures can help many an investor to cut losses. A futures contract is a standardised binding agreement to buy or sell a specified quantity of a specified grade of a commodity during a specified month. While it is freely transferable, futures can be traded only by public auction at designated exchanges. The basic hedging strategy is take an equal and opposite position to the cash market in the futures market. In other words, it means going short on the future contract if there is a long position in the regular markets and thus guard against a market decline. And if you are a short seller in the spot markets, then to guard against an unexpected rally, index futures go long on the future contract. While index futures trading can help hedge investments, unfortunately, it is still at a nascent stage in the country. The drawback of index futures, however, lies in the fact that speculators without an underlying exposure can also take advantage of them. With naked short sales banned on spot transactions, a speculator could sell index futures to benefit from the prevailing market trend.