About the FX Market

Moscow Exchange's FX Market is Russia's oldest regulated FX trading venue, operating since 1992. The market is the primary liquidity center for the rouble and a core component of the national financial system. In 2018 on-exchange operations accounted for approximately 68% of USD/RUB trading in Russia and 78% of EUR/RUB trading. The average daily trading volume (ADV) of all instruments is $ 24.3 billion.

Moscow Exchange calculates daily the family of the ruble fixing exchange rates: USD/RUB, EUR/RUB, CNY/RUB, necessary for the calculation and implementation of foreign exchange derivatives, as well as the fixings for the currency swap transactions of USD/RUB from one week to one year.

Moscow Exchange's USD/RUB fixing is used to calculate settlement prices of exchange-traded USD futures. Since January 2014, it has also been used by Russia"s National Foreign Exchange Association (NFEA) to compute the NFEA FXSWAP Rate.Moscow Exchange Group's convenient and unique trading and post trading infrastructure includes integrated trading, clearing, settlement and information services.

Moscow Exchange acts as the trade organiser and technical centre. The market operates as an order-driven trading platform in accordance with the procedure stipulated in the Rules of Organised Trading for the FX and Precious Metals Markets. The trading system ensures a level playing field for all trading members and registered clients in entering and executing FX buy/sell orders and accessing market data. Trades are executed automatically as orders are matched in the system. A special trading mode enables off book (addressed) trades. National Clearing Centre (NCC) clears trades in accordance with the Clearing Rules for the FX and Precious Metals Markets.

NCC acts as the central counterparty to every trade and guarantees performance of every transaction to non-defaulting brokers. Brokers are not required to provide full prefunding, and enjoy a highly efficient and reliable risk management system.

USD, EUR, GBP, CHF, HKD, CNY, JPY, TRY, KZT and BYN FX spot as well as swap transactions with different maturity can be made via the market's electronic trading system from 10:00 am to 11:50 pm Moscow time (as specifically set out in the Trading Schedule of the FX and Precious Metals Markets).

USD/RUB, EUR/RUB, KZT/RUB and CNY/RUB swaps with maturity in 1W, 2W, 1M, 2M, 3M, 6M, 9M and 1Y are available (for KZT/RUB 9M and 1Y aren’t available) The most actively traded currency pairs are USD/RUB and EUR/RUB, which respectively accounted for 75% and 20% of total FX Market turnover in 2Q2019. Yuan trading developed rapidly in 2014, with volumes increasing eightfold. Turnover in the national currencies of Eurasian Economic Union states also posted strong results.

In December 2018, the new currency pairs USD/CHF, USD/CNY, USD/KZT and USD/TRY were launched. JPY/RUB, USDRUB_TDB were introduced in April 2019. Furthermore, USD/JPY is launched in August 2019.

As of mid-2019, 420 companies are FX Market members, of which 320 are credit organizations (Russian banks, subsidiaries of foreign banks and resident banks of Eurasian Economic Community member states) and 98 are noncredit organizations, including 37 corporations.

The development of full direct market access (DMA) facilitated a significant increase in member activity and an expansion of the client base due to the arrival of new client categories including non-residents, Russian and foreign brokers/sub-brokers and individuals. The number of registered clients increased from 800,000 in 2016 to 3,000,000 in 2019.