FORTS participants executed 13 266 trades in futures contracts, 9.7% up on an amount of 12 116 trades the week before. Futures contracts trading volume reached 522.7 thousand contracts, or1 808.8.million rubles in underlying value, compared to the previous week's 474.2 thousand contracts and 1 872.4 million rubles.
The number of trades executed in options rose 57% to 474, up from 302 the previous week. FORTS options trading volume totaled 6 526 contracts with 22 million rubles in underlying value, compared to 8007 contracts and 27.7 million rubles last week.
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 organizer of trading and the clearinghouse on the integrated market. Nowadays 70 companies headquartered in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Kazan and Abakan are registered as FORTS members and trade 7 futures contracts and 2 options.