And given the rapidly deteriorating outlook for world economic growth and increasing fears that the European debt crisis will worsen, a
\nfurther correction in stock markets is likely. At first sight, therefore, Russia does not appear to be an obvious investment opportunity.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, relative to other emerging markets, Russia could
\nprovide strong investment returns in the coming quarters. Growth
\nrates are rapidly slowing in virtually all of the world\u2019s emerging
\neconomies, even in relatively solid countries like India and China.
\nRussia is a positive exception in this regard. Its growth rate will
\nmost likely be higher in the second half of the year than it was in
\nthe first.<\/p>\n
This favourable situation is mainly due to the stringent economic
\npolicy that the Russian authorities have implemented to limit
\ninflationary pressure. Cautious expenditure in the first half of the
\nyear has also given the government greater scope to spend more in
\nthe quarters leading up to the parliamentary elections of December
\n2011 and the presidential election of March 2012. All things
\nconsidered, growth in the second half of this year will probably
\nexceed 4%, approximately half a percentage point higher than in
\nthe first half, whereas growth in other emerging markets will slow
\nby an average of at least half a percentage point in the same period.<\/p>\n
In a world in which economic growth is becoming increasingly
\nscarcer, the Russian growth momentum is a major argument for a
\npositive assessment of its stock market, all the more so because of
\nfavourable valuations: with a price\/earnings ratio of five, Russia is
\nmore than 40% cheaper than the average of all emerging markets
\ncombined. In addition, the quality of economic policy has clearly
\nimproved since the crisis of 2008. As a result, growth is less
\nvolatile and inflation has dropped. From 10% in January 2011,
\ninflation fell to 8% by August of the same year and is expected to
\nbe 5% for the first half of 2012. The Russian rate of inflation has
\nnever been as low since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.<\/p>\n
Given the crucial importance of oil exports to both the real
\neconomy and the stock market, it is of course important that the
\nprice of oil does not drop sharply in the coming period. The bleaker outlook for world economic growth does not help.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, in a world in which major central banks are
\nincreasingly driven to printing more money and emerging markets
\nare increasingly accounting for world economic growth, prices of
\ncommodities and oil may turn out to be a positive surprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Based on the experiences of recent years, there are few stock
\nmarkets that are more risky than Russia\u2019s. After the Brazilian
\nand South African market, the Russian market has been the
\nmost sensitive to increasing risk aversion among investors since
\nthe market correction of 2008\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1480],"tags":[1663,1655,1954,1671,1681,1651,1650,1918,2239],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20392"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}