Futures & Options On The RTS Stock Exchange: New Trading Records

FORTS (Futures & Options on the RTS) Derivatives market set a new volume record on May 13, 2003 - 1 443 million rubles in underlying value, a 27% increase over the previous record of 1 147 million rubles as of April 28th, 2003. The previous record in contracts was exceeded by 16,5%, from 223 thousand to 260 thousand contracts.

The open position volume also reached the record 2 510 million rubles.

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. 83 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.