Russian market volatile, but good times ahead

COUNTRY REPORT

While Russia's equity market oscillates around the breakeven level for this year, fund manager Matthias Siller and economist Marcus Svedberg comment on the country's economic outlook

Manager view After a stellar 100.3% return in 2009, the MSCI Russia Index has dropped by 2.3% in dollar terms year to date. This performance is somewhat disappointing but it belies the improving economic picture in Russia. Furthermore, once confidence in the global economic outlook improves, we expect Russia's equity market to rebound. While Russia's equity market continues to oscillate around the breakeven level for this year, economic newsflow has been steadily improving. Q2 2010 gross domestic product growth (GDP) came in at 5.2%, a significant acceleration from the 2.9% growth seen...