FX.co ★ Moscow Exchange launches Turkish lira trading

The Moscow Stock Exchange has announced that it included the Turkish Lira in the list of its trading assets. The official lira trading was launched in the last days of January. The parties started to negotiate the launch a long time ago and implemented the project after agreeing on the key points. Now traders working on the Moscow stock exchange have access to the new instrument – the Turkish lira/Russian ruble pair.

The introduction of the new currency has not gained great popularity among traders yet. During the first session, trading volume reached only 1.5 million rubles or 100 thousand Turkish liras. For now, the long and short deals on the Turkish lira are available on the trade date (TRYRUB_TOD) with a 100% margin requirement. Soon it is planned to add the opportunity to conclude deals with the T+1 settlement period (TRYRUB_TOM), as well as overnight swaps (TRY_TODTOM) without full pre-depositing. Perhaps, this will stimulate the trading process. Recently, the relationship between Russia and Turkey has resembled a roller coaster: the shot down aircraft, dragging out the construction of the Turkish Stream pipeline, retaliatory embargoes, ban on charter holidays to Turkey, and disagreement on the Syrian issue. However, the Russian government decided not to aggravate the situation and come to terms with Turkey, abolishing the embargo, resuming flights of tourist charters, and ignoring Turkey's actions in Syria.

This allowed the foreign trade turnover between Russia and Turkey to increase by almost 40 percent and surpass $20 billion in 2017. Perhaps, the development of direct purchases of Russian rubles and Turkish liras on the foreign exchange market will help improve the status of the national currencies in settlements between the countries.