About mini nifty, the guideline from SEBI to the exchanges was to allow f&o contracts which are atleast around 2lks in contract size, mini nifty was only around a lk and hence SEBI told exchange to take this off..
The logic behind this was, SEBI said that this will attract people who have no idea of markets to come trade the markets.. Investor protection is what they called the move..
About introducing strikes at interval of 50, we as Zerodha had protested to this and as we had thought, the liquidity is getting distributed with the new strikes rather than bringing new volumes which is bad for the market..
But in the longer term it might turn out to be a good move because the arbitrageurs especially the put call parity traders, might bring in liquidity with extra strikes..
Yes , i agree with you ,that MINIFTY contact attracts low contract size PLUS low volumes.
But it is good starting point for small retailer investor, because ,in PAPER trading you
will miss EMOTIONS ,start trading in NIFTY is too much for a beginer.
If you ask me (for discussion sake) to choose from MINIFTY of futures and XX50 of options ,then I prefer Minifty.
As rightly pointed out by TP ,perhaps XX50 will help before EXPIRY since 20-30 points
variation is big at that time PLUS the put call parity traders, might bring in liquidity with extra strikes.