Will Russian equities buck the global trend?

There a good reasons to expect the Russian equity market to boom this year, despite wider fears that global equity markets will continue to struggle against a backdrop of slower growth in the world economy and rising risk aversion. Admittedly, the main RTS Index has dropped by about 15% in the last two weeks as equity markets across the world have tumbled. But it seems that investors are ignoring fundamentals. Our central forecast remains for the RTS Index to rise by 25% to 2,500 by the end of the year.