OREANDA-NEWS. September 25, 2009. In accordance with the resolution passed by the Board of Directors of RTS Stock Exchange on September 24, 2009 stock prices discovered on RTS Standard are to be included into the basis for calculation of the RTS Index, RTS-2 Index and Sectoral RTS Indices. The resolution will come into effect after the Federal Financial Markets Service has approved new methodologies for calculation of RTS Indices.

Since the launch of RTS Standard, a new cash equities market, in April 2009, market participants have been demonstrating constantly increasing activity on this segment of the exchange. For the period of May to August the average monthly number of trades on RTS Standard reached 250 thousand trades, and the average daily trading volume has already exceeded USD250 million. The last record number of trades on RTS Standard was registered on September 18, 2009 when the market participants executed over 39 thousand trades.

"Despite being a relatively young market RTS Standard has already gained a considerable market share in the exchange turnover of Russian equities. This makes it necessary to include the prices discovered on RTS Standard into the basis for calculation of the RTS Index. This will result in increased precision and timeliness of how the index reflects current stock market conditions," says Roman Goryunov, RTS CEO, "and we hope that this will be one more impetus for further development of the Russian stock market".

The effective date of the new RTS Indices methodologies will be announced shortly.

RTS Index is the main benchmark of the Russian stock market that was first calculated on September 1, 1995, its initial value was set at 100 points. The RTS Index is calculated based on 50 stocks of most capitalized Russian issuers. The RTS Indices family includes: RTS Index, RTS-2 Index, RTS Index – Oil & Gas (RTSog), RTS Index - Telecom (RTStl), RTS Index - Industrial (RTSin), RTS Index – Metals & Mining (RTSmm), RTS Index – Consumer & Retail (RTScr), RTS Index – Electric Utilities (RTSeu), and RTS Index - Financials (RTSfn).

RTS Standard sets a totally new standard for equity trading in Russia. It will facilitate building up the liquidity of the Russian securities market, curb counterparties’ risks and boost development of the infrastructure. It aims to attract substantial international investor interest into the local equity market due to the applied global standards of trading.

RTS Standard offers CCP trading in anonymous order book without full advance depositing of assets and with settlement on T+4. The market hours are from 10.30 am to 11.50 pm MSK. The range of instruments includes top 20 liquid stocks of Russian issuers. RTS Standard also offers portfolio margining with trades made on FORTS, RTS’s derivatives section, which makes trading in all the instruments possible using a single, consolidated cash position.