Moscow exchange creates its own analytical center

The Moscow Exchange is creating an information center to provide market participants with price and analytical data on over-the-counter goods in the Russian Federation and CIS countries. It is planned to provide about 3 thousand indicators and more than 300 market reports on the oil, oil refining and coal industries, chemistry and petrochemistry, metals and agricultural products markets. The project was prepared for six months, the launch is scheduled for September. Experts positively assess the appearance of the service, since foreign analogues have left Russia, but they doubt the quality and completeness of the information, especially at the first stage.

The press service of the Moscow Exchange told Kommersant about the launch of an information and analytical center (IAC) to provide customers with data on the oil, oil refining and coal industries, chemistry and petrochemistry, metals and agricultural products markets. Andrzej Arshavsky, Managing Director for Data Management and Monetization of the exchange, explained that they hired a team that previously represented Cortes, which collected information for the world’s largest terminals.

Until 2022, Bloomberg and Refinitiv (formerly Reuters) were the main data providers, but after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, they left Russia. After the departure of foreign vendors, the exchange “decided to take the team on board and, having strengthened it, begin to provide new information services in order to fill the vacuum in the market,” Mr. Arshavsky explained.

According to Andrzej Arshavsky, it is planned to supply about 3 thousand indicators and more than 300 market reports: retail, wholesale, spot and regional producer prices, data on production volumes, production, processing, supply, logistics.

The preparation went on for six months, the top manager says, the software is ready and the team has been assembled, the IAC will start working in September. Where he will receive data in conditions when most of the official statistics in the Russian Federation is closed and not published is not specified.

The cost of creating such a center can be 1-3 billion rubles, Anna Avakimyan, chief analyst at Regblok, believes: the simplest strategy is to assemble a small coordination center to purchase data from specialized associations, the most expensive is to assemble your own experts. Now price indicators and forecasts for commodities are provided by industry associations and agencies that conduct interviews with manufacturers, traders and experts, notes Andrey Barkhota, an independent financial analyst, price monitoring for each nomenclature of commodities can cost about 1 million rubles. in year.

For a rough estimate of the cost of services for end users, you can use data from foreign services, Dmitry Lesnov from Finam notes: “Bloomberg and Refinitiv had a subscription model, and the cost depended on the amount of data requested. Prices started from a few hundred to several thousand dollars. And since complex data was required in most cases, bills could easily exceed several hundred thousand dollars a month.” However, he emphasizes, in the case of the IAC of the Moscow Exchange, “the scale is not entirely comparable.”

The need to create an IAC is dictated by the increased role of over-the-counter trading and new supply chains for commodities, Andrei Barkhota believes. In the context of a limited circle of participants in transactions and the effect of sanctions, price indicators “begin to be discretionary, and information based on expert assessments gives a generally satisfactory result,” he said. To make decisions, investors need information that traders are now collecting bit by bit, such a product is definitely needed, Mr. Lesnov believes.

However, experts note the weaknesses of the project. The risks of the new IAC’s performance “come from the very essence of price forecasting without sufficient liquidity of transactions,” says Ms. Avakimyan: “There could be serious distortions associated with the fact that expert appraisers will shift the vector from a comparative to a cost approach. As a result, the dispersion of transaction price fluctuations will decrease, but with an increase in transaction volumes, sharp jerks in indicative prices are possible.” Mr. Lesnov admits that “at the first stage, the information of the Information and Information Center of the Moscow Exchange will be rather limited in comparison with the world analogues.”

Ksenia Kulikova