Total open interest as of the last day of the week, December 16th, amounted to 19,6 billion rubles or 1,14 million contracts, 34.4% and 39.5% lower, respectively, then the numbers of the previous week. This significant drop in total open interest is related to December futures settlement and December options execution.
FORTS, a unified derivatives market that was launched September 19 th , 2001, is based on trading and settlement technologies and software that were implemented at and have been successfully used by St. Petersburg Stock Exchange for 8 years. RTS acts ad the trading system and the clearinghouse on the integrated market. 90 companies from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Omsk, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Kazan and Abakan work on FORTS. They trade 10 futures and 8 options.