Russian FX market shows resilience with two-thirds growth
Russia’s largest institutional trading venue has released its trading volume data for September 2023, indicating stable growth across various market segments compared to the same period last year.
Total trading volumes on Moscow Exchange’s markets surged by two thirds in September 2023, reaching RUB 124.1 trillion compared to RUB 74.3 trillion in September 2022.
All markets performed well, with the equity, derivatives, bond, FX, money, and precious metals trades all seeing solid turnovers.
Specifically, the derivatives market’s trading volume soared by 87.5%, totaling RUB 8.9 trillion in September 2023 (compared to RUB 4.7 trillion in September 2022). The average daily trading volume (ADTV) reached RUB 421.6 billion.
Meanwhile, the equity market reported a higher volume by 85.0% to RUB 2,713.54 billion compared to RUB 1,466.6 billion the previous year. ADTV stood at RUB 129.2 billion.
FX volume also continued its upward route in September as inflation fears, and central banks’ policy reviews sparked a fresh wave of speculation and hedging activity. Average daily volumes reached RUB 1.53 trillion ($15.24 billion) in the last month, up from RUB 1.48 trillion in August, Moex said in a statement. Year-over-year, the ADV figure nearly doubled from RUB 888 billion in the same month a year earlier.
In terms of total volumes, the FX market saw 65.1% increase in monthly turnover, to RUB 32.2 trillion compared to the previous year’s figure of RUB 19.5 trillion. This growth was driven by a 27.9% increase in spot trading volumes to RUB 10.2 trillion, with swap trades and forwards accounting for RUB 22.0 trillion of the total volume.
Delving further into the details, Money Market’s turnover grew by 63.1% to RUB 76.5 trillion from RUB 46.9 trillion in September 2022. The bond market also yielded a 21.7% growth in trading volume, totaling RUB 1,265.0 billion compared to RUB 1,039.8 billion in 2022.
Other operational highlights show that trading in precious metals (spot and swaps) increased by 3.8 times, reaching RUB 49.9 billion in September 2023 (compared to RUB 13.1 billion in September 2022). Gold accounted for RUB 49.0 billion (8.3 metric tons), while silver contributed RUB 0.9 billion (12.2 metric tons).
