OREANDA-NEWS. February 9, 2012. MICEX-RTS starts to provide full-fledged Direct Market Access (DMA) to the Exchange’s FX Market for all categories of the market participants. A project on organizing a two-tier access trading on the Exchange’s FX Market launched in autumn 2010 has thereby made a step forward.

From February 13, 2012 participants of the MICEX-RTS FX Market who are traditionally banks, will gain an opportunity to register their clients in the MICEX-RTS trading and clearing system. With DMA any such client, be it a company or private investor, will be able to execute trades directly on the Exchange at prices of the on-exchange currency market taking advantage of the market liquidity.

Similar to the trading opportunities provided by the Securities market, the FX Market participants can now register additional settlement codes used for segregation of clients and their own trading positions at clearing and settlement.

Non-residents of the Russian Federation will be able to perform FX transactions in rubles as clients of Russian banks.

"Taking into account global trends, we expect that the updated two-tier access will entail not only an improvement in liquidity on the Russian on-exchange currency market, due to a wider range of participant categories including non-residents, but also a positive impact on all the markets of the Integrated exchange", said Roman Goryunov, First Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Senior Managing Director at MICEX-RTS.

 Foreign Exchange Market of MICEX-RTS is one of the key segments of the Russian financial market. Since 1992 the Bank of Russia has been determining the official exchange rate for the Russian ruble based on the results of currency trading on MICEX-RTS. FX trades on MICEX-RTS are executed in the electronic trading system during the unified trading session (UTS) that brings together regional technological centers. The exchange organizes trading in US dollar, euro, Ukrainian hryvnia, Kazakhstan tenge, Belarusian ruble, and Chinese yuan. Market participants can also execute currency swaps. In 2011 the exchange launched a new instrument – "dual currency basket of the Bank of Russia". Roughly 600 credit organizations are Trading Members of MICEX-RTS FX Market. The total trading volume on the regulated currency market reached RUB85.6 trillion, or USD2.9 trillion in 2011 (around 29% of the total turnover on the regulated markets of the MICEX-RTS Group).