OREANDA-NEWS. On 20 March 2009 was announced, that according to the annual report issued by the Futures Industry Association (FIA), one of the world’s major professional associations of derivative exchanges FORTS, RTS derivatives section, was rated 11th among 52 global derivative exchanges ranked by the number of contracts traded in the year 2008.

FIA announces that over the last year the trading volume on FORTS reached 238,220,708 contracts, which is a 65.5% increase on the year 2007. The most liquid instrument of the Russian market – RTS Index futures contract – was put in 16th place in the trading volume rating (measured in contracts) among other 20 equity derivative instruments most actively traded worldwide. FIA reports a trading volume of 87,469,405 contracts for the RTS Index futures in 2008.

Russian Trading System Stock Exchange has been participating in the FIA ratings since early 2008 when after several months of submission of all the FORTS data (Futures and options on RTS) in compliance with the requirements of the "Futures Industry Magazine" it was included into the rating for the first time. In less than a year FORTS rating was upgraded from 16th place (first quarter results) to 11th place in the annual rating. In 2008 either the RTSI futures or the gold futures contract was ranked the fastest growing derivatives contract of the corresponding section worldwide.

It is a sign of a solid interest towards derivatives that provide broad opportunities to all investor categories, and a growing activity of the market participants.