Futures & Options On The RTS Stock Exchange: August 2004 Monthly Data

In August 2004 total trading volume on FORTS (Futures & Options on the RTS) reached 3 million contracts and 21 billion rubles. Total open interest as of August 31st, 2004 grew by 14% in rubles and 11% in contracts and equaled 7.2 billion rubles and 938 thousand contracts.

The top selling contracts in January were "RAO UES of Russia" futures contracts (60% of total trading volume), "Gazprom" futures contract (16%) and "LUKoil" futures contract (13%).

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 8 years. RTS acts as the trading system and the clearinghouse on the integrated market. 86 companies headquartered in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Kazan and Abakan are the registered members of FORTS. They trade 8 futures contracts and 3 options.