OREANDA-NEWS. February 07, 2011. On February 4, 2011 FORTS, the futures and options market of RTS Stock Exchange, saw a record high in trading volume of cash-settled futures contract on raw sugar. At the end of the day the total trading volume amounted to USD4.8mln (RUB141 mln) representing 6,564 contracts.

‘Sugar is one of the most actively traded exchange products worldwide. The sugar exchange quotations grew nearly 60% over 2010. The growth in trading activity in this new RTS contract launched to trading in October 2010 has been provided mainly by two reasons.  Firstly, a number of large sugar industry participants including international ones have entered the market. Secondly, the agro-commodities markets have shown the high level of volatility recently attracting speculative investors’, said Evgeny Serdyukov, Director of the Futures & Options Market at OJSC RTS.

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 2009. At present FORTS has the widest range of instruments in Russia. These are 49 contracts (36 futures and 13 options) on RTS Index, shares of Russian companies, short term interest rates, currency, oil,  gold, silver, and sugar.