CEO says Moscow Exchange not to suspend trading, cut time

MOSCOW, Mar 20 (PRIME) -- The Moscow Exchange has no plans to suspend trading because of higher volatility or cut the time of the trading sessions like other bourses, CEO Yury Denisov told PRIME in an interview released on Friday.

"Our key goal is to ensure investor access to their assets so that they can make all necessary transactions on the market any moment regardless of the market situation. Therefore, the trading floor has been working as usual all these days. None of the Moscow Exchange markets has plans to stop trade because of higher volatility, including the stock market," Denisov said.

He said that instead of trade suspension, the Moscow Exchange uses a mechanism of discrete auctions, which allows the participants to take more time to analyze bids and asks.

According to Denisov, client activity boosted loading on the platforms of the Moscow Exchange by 50–100% in 2020 but the trading floor has enough resources to service all clients.

"For instance, last week about 60 million bids were made on the futures market. Days when the number of deals exceeding 3 million have become regular while earlier they were rare. Another interesting fact: up to 75,000 bids come to the futures market in the first second of the session, while normally no more than 30,000," the official said.

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