Moscow Exchange is expanding its MOEX perpetual futures range with 20 new contracts tied to major US-listed companies, giving Russian retail and institutional investors synthetic exposure to names such as Tesla, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, AMD, Robinhood and Coinbase, all without touching a foreign brokerage account.
Trading opens in two stages: 8 September and 15 September 2026. Contracts are priced against MOEX’s own calculated fixings for foreign securities, denominated in US dollars but settled entirely in Russian rubles.
How MOEX Perpetual Futures on US Stocks Actually Work
A perpetual future (a derivative contract with no fixed expiry date) differs from a standard futures contract in that it does not require the holder to roll into a new position at expiry. MOEX has been calculating its own reference prices, known as fixings, for foreign securities since July 2026 and uses these as the settlement benchmark for the new contracts.
Because everything clears in rubles on MOEX’s own infrastructure, Russian investors are not required to make payments through foreign financial systems, a practical constraint that Western sanctions have made relevant since 2022.
The exchange reported that open interest (the total value of outstanding contracts) in its perpetual futures lineup has grown 36% year over year, exceeding 450 billion rubles (approximately $6 billion), with more than 60,000 clients trading these instruments each month.
Maria Patrikeeva, Managing Director of the Derivatives Market at Moscow Exchange, said the 20 additions would ‘significantly expand the range of investment strategies available to our clients and contribute to further liquidity growth in the Russian derivatives market.’
When Patrikeeva spoke, the existing lineup stood at 11 perpetual futures covering currencies, indices, precious metals and equities. According to a later MOEX release cited by Crypto.news, the total had already reached 31 contracts by the time of a subsequent announcement, suggesting the lineup expanded between the two statements.
Crypto Perpetual Futures Are Next in the Pipeline
MOEX is not stopping at US equities. The exchange separately announced five crypto perpetual futures set to begin trading on 22 September 2026, linked to Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, XRP and Tron, according to Cryptonomist. These will be available only to qualified investors (a regulatory classification for more experienced market participants), with contracts quoted in US dollars and settled in rubles, and with no delivery of the underlying cryptocurrencies.
Demand for the existing crypto-linked products gives some context for the appetite. More than 72,000 qualified investors have traded MOEX’s digital-asset futures since the exchange began offering crypto-linked contracts, with cumulative transaction volume exceeding 600 billion rubles, according to a September MOEX release cited by Crypto.news. Those figures are separate from, and larger than, the 450 billion ruble open-interest figure and 60,000 monthly client count for the broader perpetual futures lineup.
On the mechanics, CryptoRank reports that MOEX set the funding rate parameters for the new crypto contracts at K1 of 0% and K2 of 0.35%, with each contract lasting one day and automatically rolling into the next trading period. That automatic roll is what gives the contract its ‘perpetual’ character: investors can maintain continuous exposure without manually closing and reopening positions.
A Global Trend MOEX Is Tapping Into
MOEX’s push into single-stock derivatives sits alongside a broader global expansion of this product type. CME Group announced in June 2026 that it would launch single stock futures across more than 50 top US equities on 27 July 2026, offering both standard-sized and Micro-sized contracts, subject to completion of regulatory review, according to the CME Group press release. Exchanges on both sides of the geopolitical divide are clearly betting that demand for flexible, leveraged single-stock exposure is growing.
For UK investors, these instruments are not directly accessible, and the ruble-settlement structure adds a layer of currency and counterparty risk that falls well outside standard ISA or SIPP territory. What the MOEX story does illustrate is a global shift: derivatives markets are increasingly being used to replicate equity exposure without ownership of the underlying asset, and exchanges everywhere are racing to build the infrastructure to meet that demand.
The key date to watch is 22 September 2026, when the crypto perpetual contracts go live. If trading volumes in those contracts match the pace already set in the digital-asset futures that preceded them, MOEX will have a further data point to justify deeper expansion into foreign-asset derivatives, and a template other emerging-market exchanges may be tempted to follow.
