RTS 2008: the year in review

by Russian Trading System Stock Exchange 11 Feb 15:43

Trading volumes increase by 10%, despite harsh economic climate.
2008 was one of the most challenging years for the Russian equity market. Whilst last May the RTS Index hit an all time high of 2487.92 points (as of May 19, 2008), in September – October it reported a significant decline, falling to 549.43 points.

Despite the sharp changes in the economic environment, the total trading volume on the RTS markets in 2008 reached 756,5 billion dollars, which is a 10% increase on the previous year. Over 50% of the trading volume growth was generated on FORTS, the derivatives section of RTS.

RTS, as an integral part of the market infrastructure, has performed at its best under all economic conditions and demonstrated proven settlement reliability and remarkable technology developments. To an extent this became possible thanks to the introduction of the Central Counterparty trading with settlement guaranteed by the exchange.

Further development of the equity market is one of the priorities for RTS. The most significant event of the last year in this field was upgrading the CCP technologies and the launch of netting on RTS, a technology meeting the best practices of exchange trading. The introduction of netting resulted in reduced funding costs, simplified settlement procedure and improved market performance. RTS expanded the number of stocks available for CCP trading by adding Sberbank and VTB Bank shares.

Full story: http://www.rts.ru/a18260