OREANDA-NEWS. August 17, 2007. the trading volume of futures contracts on US dollar on the Futures and Options on RTS market (FORTS) made up 94 million dollars. This is a record value of the daily trading volume of futures contracts on currency. The previous record, registered on August 10, 2007 was exceeded by factor of 1.5.

The growth of trading activity takes place along with the rise of the number of open position. At the end of the day the volume of open position on futures on currency made up 228 million dollars.

The ever-growing interest to the instruments of the currency market on the Derivatives market of RTS (futures and options on US Dollar and MosIBOR overnight rate) is connected with the increased volatility on the markets of underlying assets and the trading participants’ wish to hedge against the risks of unfavourable change of the US dollar rate and interest rates.

Derivatives market of RTS – FORTS is a leading trading ground for futures and options in Russia. Trading on FORTS started in September 2001. At present FORTS has the widest in Russian range of instruments. These are 56 contracts (37 futures and 19 options) on shares of Russian companies, bonds, short interest rates, currency, RTS Index, oil, oil products and gold.

The trading volume on FORTS in 2006 exceeded 100 bln dollars. All in all there were made more than 5 mln trades with 89,6 mln contracts. Average daily open interest on standard contracts in 2006 grew by 259,5% in rubles and in December reached 5 bln dollars.