Futures & Options On Russian Trading System: Weekly Market Information

For the week of October 21th-October 25th, 2002, the total trading volume on FORTS (Futures & Options on RTS) increased by 9.2% and reached 529.6 thousand contracts or 1844.4 million rubles in underlying value, compared to the last week's 502 thousand contracts and 1 688.5 million rubles. The number of trades executed went down from 11 936 to 11 545.

FORTS members executed 11 356 trades in futures contracts, a step down from the previous week's 11 659 trades. Futures contracts trading volume increased from 492 thousand contracts to 523 thousand; total underlying value rose by 10%, from 1 657 million rubles to 1 824 million rubles.

The number of trades executed in options went down from 277 to 189. FORTS options trading volume decreased from 31.6 million rubles in underlying value and 10.2 thousand contracts to 20 million rubles and 6.5 thousand contracts.

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. 78 companies headquartered in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg