Conflict with Ukraine could prove damaging to Russia’s efforts to lure more investors, something the country has attempted to do by becoming one of the more compelling dividend destinations in the developing world. Several top-10 holdings in the aforementioned ETFs have recently boosted their payouts. [Russia Looks to Assert Dividend Dominance]
The specter of capital flight at the hands of foreign investors cannot be overlooked as it pertains to Russian stocks and ETFs. Andrei Kuznetsov, strategist at Sberbank “estimates about 70 percent of Russian freely traded shares is controlled by foreigners and a big portion of foreigners – about 40 percent – is from the United States,” Reuters reported.
There is evidence some traders were prepared for the conflict in Ukraine to take a turn for the worse. The Direxion Daily Russia Bear 3x Shares (NYSEArca: RUSS) ended February as Direxion’s top-performing triple leveraged bearish ETF and saw modest creation activity last Friday, according to issuer data.
Direxion Daily Russia Bear 3x Shares
