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RTS Stock Exchange: FORTS Shows All-Time Records

Date 09/12/2004

On December 8th, 2004, FORTS (Futures & Options on RTS) derivatives market registered the all-time records. The trading volume in contracts reached 435 thousand, 20% higher than the previous record of May 21st, 2003 (387 thousand contracts), and 2.5 times higher than the average daily data for November 2004.

Trading volume in rubles also exceeded the previous record data and reached 3.3 billon rubles. The number of transactions executed on December 8th, 2004 equaled to 13 thousand, 28% higher than the previous record of 13 thousand posted on December 2nd, 2004.

"Trading activity on the market rose due to the increase in hedging activity and significant drop in prices for the underlying instruments," says Roman Goryunov, head of the derivatives market at the RTS Stock Exchange. "This hypothesis is backed by the fact that despite numerous speculative positions closing related to the overall movement of the market, the number of open positions on December 8th stayed the same".

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 from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Kazan and Abakan FORTS participants trade 8 futures contracts and 3 options.