As of Thursday this week (8 July), option contracts on EUR/USD futures began on FORTS, the derivatives market of the Russian Trading System (RTS) stock exchange.
This extends the FX offering of RTS to five contracts. RTS says the contracts have been introduced “to address the growing hedging needs of market participants given the unstable EU market”.
Evgeny Serdyukov, director of futures and options market at RTS, says: “RTS is launching the new option contract to meet the recurrent requests from market participants. We expect the new instrument to attract solid demand from FX derivatives users and create new investment strategies.
“The FX contracts offered on FORTS make up a set of reliable hedging tools that can protect deposits and loans denominated in a foreign currency. In the autumn of 2008, investors who had taken a US dollar credit, or set up a ruble deposit, experienced losses due to the extremely volatile international markets. Those who bought the USD/RUB futures or options were able to recover the losses incurred as a result of the sharp fluctuations in FX rates.”