Futures & Options On RTS Stock Exchange: Open Position Record

On February 19th, 2003, a new open position record was registered on FORTS (Futures &Options on RTS) - 394 thousand contracts, including 342 thousand futures contracts and 52 thousand contracts (total underlying value equaled 721 million rubles). This figure exceeds the previous record of 348 thousand contracts posted on January 13th, 2003.

FORTS, a unified derivatives market operating since September 19, 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 7 years. RTS acts as the trading system and the clearinghouse on the integrated market. 81 companies headquartered in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Kazan and Abakan are FORTS registered members. They trade 7 futures contracts and 2 options.