Actuality February 19, 2008

By estimation of Troika Dialog, the average daily volume of transactions with the Russian stocks totals $6,1 bln. Bloomberg agency estimates it at $5 bln, the difference is explained that more than $1 bln falls to over-the-counter (OTC) transactions. 45% transactions fall to the Russian stock exchanges, 36% – to the foreign one and 19% – to the OTC transactions in Russia.

The fact that the turnovers of OTC market are included to the calculations, substantially changes the picture of the Russian market liquidity. "To the category of securities, with which the average daily volume of transactions exceeds $5 mln, three stocks (OGC-4, OGC-5 and the Seventh Continent) are added, degree of stocks with the turnover more than $3 mln are filled up with 10 securities, and those with which daily transactions are conducted for more than $1 mln, becomes more by 22", writes Kingsmill Bond in the published review of Troika Dialog. Other words, there are more attractive stocks on the Russian market than it was accepted to suppose.

The author of review, as it seems, is surprised by his result. According to him, only on five emerging markets the daily turnover exceeds $1 bln – except for Russia it is China, India, Korea and Taiwan. High turnover of market, high liquidity on it means that investments into Russia can be interesting to the much more number of portfolio investors. However, not only – traditionally after or parallel to portfolio investments come direct ones. Maybe, not by chance that almost all countries from this five attract very high volumes of direct investments for many years. Last years Russia entered their number: in 2007 direct investments totaled $52 bln, or about 5% of GDP – extremely worthy even by China standards. And if the potential of investments into Russia is indeed underestimated, this index can be higher already in the nearest years.