Trading System

Brief History

The MICEX Trading System was launched in 1993–1994 in order to develop MICEX as an electronic exchange that uses the new generation of automated trading systems.

The main objectives of creating the Trading System were:

to provide clients with a fully electronic exchange system for a wide range of securities for the Stock, Currency, and Derivatives Markets;
to create a base for the further development of a distributed electronic trading network so that companies would be able to trade securities from their remote offices;
to set up a technological platform for the creation of a country-wide securities market that would be formed by the regional exchanges integrated into a single network.

Use of the Trading System started on 30 March 1994. Implemented dynamic expansion mechanisms for traded securities as well as the mechanisms handling the rapidly increasing number of users make the system’s technological base that of a universal electronic exchange.

Until the middle of 1994, all the trader workstations were only installed at the MICEX trading hall. However, the Trading System had initially been developed to handle remote workstations and maintain connection with the remote exchanges.

In the second half of 1994, with the installation of the first remote workstations in the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the deployment of remote workstation clusters started in other banks and broker companies.

The era of inter-regional trading started on 10 October 1995 when the trading on the first regional exchange started at the Siberian Interbank Currency Exchange (Novosibirsk). By autumn of 1996, the regional network of exchanges already included 7 organizations in St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Ekaterinburg, Vladivostok, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, and Novosibirsk.

The Derivatives Market module of the Trading System was launched in September 1996. Initially, only futures were traded.

In March 1997 the upgraded version of the Trading System was launched in the Government-Backed Securities and Equities Markets, and later – on the electronic Currency Market.

In June 1999 the first external Trading System was connected to the Currency Market using the Universal Bridge.

In 2000 the mass connection of various broker systems to the MICEX Trading System via the Universal Bridges started. Thus, the real development of Internet trading in Russia began.