Page 101 - RusRPTFeb23

8.3 Stock market
8.3.1 Equity market dynamics
The turnover of foreign securities trading on Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange (SPB EX) in 2022 fell 3.2-fold year on year to $122.2mn, Vedomosti daily reported. The number of transactions in foreign shares and depositary receipts plunged by 67% to $115mn.
As followed by bne IntelliNews, prior to Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, SPB Exchange banked on the retail investment boom and became the main platform for local investors to acquire foreign shares.
The stock exchange attributed the decline in trading volume to the blocking by the EU of some of SPB Bank's client and proprietary assets held at the sanctioned National Securities Depository (NSD). The turnover was also affected by the new restrictions imposed by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) that from October 2022 banned unqualified investors from buying securities from “unfriendly” jurisdictions.
Still, despite the drop in foreign securities trading volumes, the exchange still expects to end 2022 with a profit.
The top 20 most popular securities by trading volume accounted for 48.45% (48.53% for 2021). The leaders were Tesla (14.77% of total trading volume in 2022), NVIDIA (4.98%), Alibaba (3.54%), Apple (2.98%) and Coinbase (2.85%), according to Vedomosti.
The number of average daily transactions in 2022 was about 0.45mn (down from 1.38mn in 2021), with an average transaction volume of $1,063 ($1,132 in 2021). While the number of trading accounts with securities positions increased by 11% to 1.78mn, the number of actually active accounts decreased by 76% to 0.19mn.
In Russia the “fear index” hit a historical high in 2022 and the Russian stock market was more volatile than during the pandemic years.
The RVI index (an indicator of the volatility of the Russian market, which is also called the “fear index”) reached a maximum of 169.96 points at the end of March. This is the highest figure since November 2013 for this indicator.
For comparison: in March 2021, the value of the RVI index was 30-34 points, and in March 2020, during the pandemic crisis, it reached about 129 points.
By the end of 2022, the RVI value stabilised and dropped to 39 (as of December 30), which still remained higher than a year ago of 30-32.
Other indicators of the Russian stock market also showed the worst values since 2008. Thus the ruble index of the Moscow Exchange (which includes
101 RUSSIA Country Report February 2023 www.intellinews.com