Futures & Options on RTS: Weekly Data January 13th-January 17th

For the week of January 13th, the total trading volume on FORTS (Futures & Options on RTS) equaled 565 thousand contracts, or 2 488 million rubles in underlying value. The number of trades reached 13 250 (from December 30th, 2002, to January 10th, 2003, 341 thousand contracts were traded, with 1 553 million in underlying value). Daily average trading volume gained 132% in contracts and 124% in rubles. Average daily activity increased by 83% and reached 2 650 thousand trades a day. Total open interest, as of January 17th, 2003, stood at 370 thousand contracts and 1,5 million rubles, a 7,7% increase in contracts and 11,6% gain in rubles over January 10th numbers.

FORTS members executed 12 650 trades in futures contracts, with total trading volume reaching 557 thousand contracts, or 2 452 million rubles in underlying value. Average daily figures has increased 2,4 times to 111 thousand contacts (or 2,3 times to 490 million rubles in underlying value) over the previous period.

FORTS options trading volume equaled 8,4 thousand contracts or 37 million rubles in underlying value, compared with 12,5 thousand contracts or 55,6 million rubles for the period of December 30th, 2002 - January 3rd, 2003). Average daily trading activity doubled, from 60 to 120 trades per day.

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. 80 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.