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than a broad based rally story.
The market sell off over the first months of this year is being seen as a buying opportunity by many investors. The roughly 10% fall in the indices is very unusual, observes VTB's strategist Alexey Zabotkin. In the Russian stock market’s 21-year history, only 1998 and 2014 had a similar or worse openings, once the performance is measured relative to the MSCI EM index. And both those years there was a significant drop in oil prices. Russia has always been cheap when compared to its MSCI peer group, but current the wide spread between Russian stocks and the MSCI emerging markets universe to record setting levels, says Zabotkin. However, while p/e ratios are lagging, Russia is leading the rest of the emerging markets in terms of dividend yields. Normally this combination of low prices and high dividend yields would make for an enticing investment proposition.
For more read bne’s April cover story for what stocks are hot.
80 RUSSIA Country Report April 2017 www.intellinews.com