Moscow Exchange reports record activity by private investors

Private investor activity on the Moscow Exchange (MOEX), Russia’s largest stock market, reached an all-time high in February, according to a press release on Wednesday.

A total of 4.1 million individuals conducted transactions on the exchange last month. During the reporting period, they invested 74.2 billion rubles ($820 million), an 11% increase year-on-year. The vast majority of investments were made in bonds, amounting to roughly 59.1 billion rubles.

The overall number of individuals with brokerage accounts on MOEX exceeded 30.7 million at the end of last month. They opened 54.3 million accounts.

Among the most popular securities in the portfolios of private investors were the shares of Russia’s largest lender SBER Bank (37.9%), state energy giant Gazprom (14.1%), oil major Lukoil (14.1%), tech giant Yandex (7.9%), as well as stocks of energy companies Surgutneftegaz and Rosneft, and mining majors Norilsk Nickel and Severstal.

According to data released earlier this week, the total trading volumes across MOEX’s markets surged to 111.4 trillion rubles in February, a weighty increase from 83.6 trillion rubles a year ago. In the foreign exchange (FX) market, which makes up a significant portion of MOEX’s activities, trading volume reached 27.7 trillion rubles against 19.4 trillion recorded in February 2023.

The latest data follows MOEX’s robust financial results for 2023, when its net profit soared to 60.8 billion rubles from 36.3 billion the previous year, while total trading volumes on its FX market hit 328 trillion, up 22.5% from 2022. Individuals invested more than 1.1 trillion rubles in securities traded on the exchange last year, but MOEX reported a sharp decline in investments in December, with analysts polled by Forbes linking this with the high key rate of the Bank of Russia, which currently stands at 16%.

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