RTS Stock Exchange: FORTS Open Interest Record

On April 11 th , 2005, the new open interest record was registered on FORTS, the derivatives market of the RTS Stock Exchange. Total open interest exceeded 1,72 million contracts, two times over the number of daily average number of open positions in 2004 and 28% higher than the daily average posted since the beginning of the year.

The leaders in open interest as of April 11, 2005, were futures on RAO UES of Russia stock (27.415), "Gazprom" single stock futures (23,73%), and options on futures contracts on RAO UES of Russia (23.47%) and LUKOil (10.68%).

The new open interest record can be attributed to the significant increase in the futures open interest that on April 11 th , 2005, for the first time in the history of the derivatives market, exceeded 1 million contracts.

	Open Interest as of 11.04.2005, contracts	Change, compared to the daily average for the period of 11.01.2005 11.04.2005,%	Change, compared to daily average for the year 2004 ., %
Futures	1 017 930	29,85	90,82
Options	705 264	24,37	112,45
Total	1 723 194	27,55	99,12

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. 87 companies from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Kazan and Abakan FORTS participants trade 8 futures contracts and 4 options.