joint statement by the stock exchanges says MICEX capacity peaked at 20 thousand transactions per second, while trading participants tested the infrastructure at half the capacity - 10 thousand transactions per second.

The 2010 MICEX testing results showed peaks at 4 thousand and 2,13 thousand per second respectively. When peak limits were exceeded, the system accelerated the processing substantially, while normal system response is 2-3 milliseconds. Last year, MICEX trading migrated to Linux from Windows.

Further details of the stress test will be published soon, MICEX told Interfax.

RTS stress test showed a 20 thousand per second result.

Infrastructure Projects Director at RTS, Sergey Zamolotskikh told Interfax that RTS tests last year totaled a maximum 1,5 thousand transactions per second. “This year we tested a next upgrade of our system, which is currently in development and will take more effort for implementation. Tests involved maximizing transaction capacity to 20k per second through dedicated bot-programs”, he said.

“Final stress test analysis will show how close the new system architecture is to our expectations, including processing speed and system stability under prolonged peak load”, said Zamolotskikh.

Final MICEX/RTS trading stress test results will be discussed at joint stock exchange tech committees on 14 October.

The majority RTS and MICEX shareholders signed a framework merger agreement on 29 June. The legal RTS-MICEX merger is set to be finalized by 19 December.

As of today, there is no decision to unify the trading systems. There is a possibility that both exchanges will retain their optimized systems to serve different markets.

Trading infrastructure, Project Group №1