In the first year of the Moscow Exchange derivatives market operating on weekends, the total trading turnover exceeded 1.7 trillion rubles. This figure is not just statistics, but a marker of how the habits of market participants have changed. More than 215,000 clients took advantage of the opportunity to conclude futures and options deals on Saturdays and Sundays, confirming high demand for flexibility and accessibility in trading.
Weekend trading started on August 16, 2025, and within a year the exchange summarized the first results. On average over 12 months, the share of deals executed on non-working days amounted to 3.8% of the main trading session volume. This is a significant indicator demonstrating that weekends have become a full-fledged trading window, not just an experimental addition.
Record volumes and popular instruments
The peak of activity occurred on February 28, 2026, when participants executed deals worth 82.6 billion rubles — an absolute record for the entire period of the additional session. Notably, since July 18, 2026, deals with currency futures became available on weekends, and in less than a month, turnover on these instruments reached 34 billion rubles.
Most often, clients chose futures on Brent crude oil, gold, and the Moscow Exchange Index. The list of popular instruments also included perpetual futures on the Moscow Exchange Index, natural gas contracts, the RTS Index, QQQ ETF Trust units, as well as mini-contracts on the Moscow Exchange Index and Brent oil. This indicates that investors actively use weekends to hedge risks and respond to global events.
The main goal of expanding trading hours is to give participants the ability to respond to events at any moment. Derivatives market instruments allow participation in price movements not only of Russian assets but also of popular global instruments, whose activity peaks occur at different times of the day.
Weekend deals take place from 09:50 to 19:00: the first ten minutes are allocated to the opening auction, followed by the trading period. Investors can work with all futures and calendar spreads, while options are available only in the negotiated mode, with liquidity supported by market makers.
Moscow Exchange expands access to trading
The exchange is consistently increasing trading hours for investors. The launch of deals on Saturdays and Sundays became one of the steps in this direction, and subsequently the exchange continued to change schedules across several markets at once. Starting September 14, the main session will begin an hour earlier — at 9:00, and its duration will increase to 10 hours. The changes will affect the equity, derivatives, currency markets, and the precious metals market.
Weekend activity confirms demand for continuous access to instruments. It is important for investors to react to news when the main session has already closed and foreign platforms continue to operate. Contracts on foreign and commodity assets, whose trading is not tied to the Russian schedule, are of particular interest.
Demand for new opportunities is also confirmed by retail activity. In July, private investors invested 142.9 billion rubles in securities, and their share in equity deals reached 63.3%. This indicates growing interest in the exchange's instruments and that the exchange is successfully adapting to the needs of the modern trader.
My view: The growth in weekend turnover is not just a trend, but a fundamental shift in the perception of the market. Investors no longer want to wait until Monday to react to geopolitical or macroeconomic changes. Given the current dynamics, I expect the share of weekend sessions to only grow, especially with the expansion of the instrument lineup and further improvement in liquidity.