OREANDA-NEWS. April 6, 2011. Starting from April 6, 2011 in accordance with the new version of the Derivatives Rules, futures contracts on a basket of federal loan bonds will be included in the list of instruments on the Money section of FORTS, the futures and option market of RTS. Such an approach will be in line with practices on global exchanges and will allow a wider range of market participants (banks first of all) gain access to trading in futures on bonds, which are in essence, futures on long-term interest rates.

At the moment, futures on a basket of federal loan bonds are one of the most rapidly developing instruments on FORTS. By the end of trading on 5 April, the open interest volume exceeded USD88.5 million (RUB 2.5 billion) in value.

Trading in deliverable futures contracts on a basket of federal loan bonds started on February 17, 2011 on FORTS. Contracts’ code in the trading system is (OFZ). The underlying assets of the futures are 2-year and 4-year federal loan bonds.

FORTS, the derivatives market of RTS, is the leading trading venue for futures and options in Russia. Trading on FORTS started in September 2001. According to the Futures Industry Association the derivatives market of RTS is among the TOP-10 global derivatives exchanges based on the results of first 6 months of 2010. At present FORTS has the widest range of instruments in Russia. These are 54 contracts (40 futures and 14 options) on RTS Index, RTS Standard Index, shares of Russian companies, short term interest rates, currency, oil, gasoil, power, gold, silver, and sugar.