It is one thing for western companies, funds, investment trusts and others to promise to divest from Russian assets. But what if the Russian authorities won’t let you? The Moscow stock market has failed to open for a fifth day running. Prior to its closure, it had already plummeted by a third after the invasion of Ukraine. Russian investments traded on external markets have continued to plummet during the closure: JP Morgan Russian Securities, an investment trust traded on the London Stock Exchange, plunged by another 15 per cent this morning to 101 pence – just one-eighth of what it was trading at last autumn.
Is that a bargain? ‘Buy on the sound of gunfire’, goes the old stock market adage. Well, maybe, if you are buying stocks in other world markets, which have also plummeted this week but where you can be reasonably sure that capitalism will continue, and where markets will surely recover to some kind of normality once the crisis has subsided.
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