Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 24)

Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 17)

Postby winston » Wed Oct 18, 2017 9:00 am

Why it’s time to buy Russian stocks

by Justin Spittler

Right now, the CAPE ratio for Russian stocks is hovering around 6. For perspective, the S&P 500 is currently trading at a CAPE ratio of 31.


Its economy revolves around oil. In fact, crude oil makes up 33% of its exports. Refined oil products account for another 16%.

Because of this, Russian stocks closely track oil.


So, consider buying Russian stocks if you’re looking for a cheap way to profit from higher oil prices.

You can easily do this with an ETF like RSX.


Source: Casey Daily Dispatch

http://thecrux.com/its-time-to-buy-russian-stocks/
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118522
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 17)

Postby behappyalways » Sat Oct 28, 2017 4:18 pm

Russia under Vladimir Putin

A tsar is born

As the world marks the centenary of the October Revolution, Russia is once again under the rule of the tsar

SEVENTEEN years after Vladimir Putin first became president, his grip on Russia is stronger than ever. The West, which still sees Russia in post-Soviet terms, sometimes ranks him as his country’s most powerful leader since Stalin.

Russians are increasingly looking to an earlier period of history. Both liberal reformers and conservative traditionalists in Moscow are talking about Mr Putin as a 21st-century tsar.

Mr Putin has earned that title by lifting his country out of what many Russians see as the chaos in the 1990s and by making it count again in the world. Yet as the centenary of the October revolution draws near, the uncomfortable thought has surfaced that Mr Putin shares the tsars’ weaknesses, too.

Although Mr Putin worries about the “colour” revolutions that swept through the former Soviet Union, the greater threat is not of a mass uprising, still less of a Bolshevik revival. It is that, from spring 2018 when Mr Putin starts what is constitutionally his last six-year term in office after an election that he will surely win, speculation will begin about what comes next.

And the fear will grow that, as with other Russian rulers, Tsar Vladimir will leave turbulence and upheaval in his wake.

Firm rule

Mr Putin is hardly the world’s only autocrat. Personalised authoritarian rule has spread across the world over the past 15 years—often, as with Mr Putin, built on the fragile base of a manipulated, winner-takes-all democracy. It is a rebuke to the liberal triumphalism which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Leaders such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey (see article), the late Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and even Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, have behaved as if they enjoy a special authority derived directly from the popular will. In China Xi Jinping this week formalised his absolute command of the Communist Party (see article).

Mr Putin’s brand of authoritarianism blazed the trail. It evokes Russia’s imperial history (see Briefing), offering a vivid picture of how power works and how it might go wrong.

Like a tsar, Mr Putin surmounts a pyramid of patronage. Since he moved against the oligarchs in 2001, taking control first of the media and then of the oil and gas giants, all access to power and money has been through him.

These days the boyars serve at his pleasure, just as those beneath them serve at their pleasure and so on all the way down. He wraps his power in legal procedure, but everyone knows that the prosecutors and courts answer to him.

He enjoys an approval rating of over 80% partly because he has persuaded Russians that, as an aide says, “If there is no Putin, there is no Russia.”

Like a tsar, too, he has faced the question that has plagued Russia’s rulers since Peter the Great—and which acutely confronted Alexander III and Nicholas II in the run-up to the revolution.

Should Russia modernise by following the Western path towards civil rights and representative government, or should it try to lock in stability by holding fast against them? Mr Putin’s answer has been to entrust the economy to liberal-minded technocrats and politics to former KGB officers.

Inevitably, politics has dominated economics and Russia is paying the price. However well administered during sanctions and a rouble devaluation, the economy still depends too heavily on natural resources.

It can manage annual GDP growth of only around 2%, a far cry from 2000-08, which achieved an oil-fired 5-10%. In the long run, this will cramp Russia’s ambitions.

And like a tsar, Mr Putin has buttressed his power through repression and military conflict. At home, in the name of stability, tradition and the Orthodox religion, he has suppressed political opposition and social liberals, including feminists, NGOs and gays.

Abroad, his annexation of Crimea and the campaigns in Syria and Ukraine have been burnished for the evening news by a captive, triumphalist media. However justified, the West’s outrage at his actions underlined to Russians how Mr Putin was once again asserting their country’s strength after the humiliations of the 1990s.

What does this post-modern tsar mean for the world? One lesson is about the Russian threat. Since the interference in Ukraine, the West has worried about Russian revanchism elsewhere, especially in the Baltic states.

But Mr Putin cannot afford large numbers of casualties without also losing legitimacy, as happened to Nicholas II in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05 and in the first world war. Because today’s tsar knows history, he is likely to be opportunistic abroad, shadowboxing rather than risking a genuine confrontation.

The situation at home is different. In his time in power Mr Putin has shown little appetite for harsh repression. But Russia’s record of terrible suffering suggests that, whereas dithering undermines the ruler’s legitimacy, mass repression can strengthen it—at least for a time. The Russian people still have something to fear.

Mother Russia’s offspring

The other lesson is about succession. The October revolution is just the most extreme recent case of power in Russia passing from ruler to ruler through a time of troubles. Mr Putin cannot arrange his succession using his bloodline or the Communist Party apparatus. Perhaps he will anoint a successor. But he would need someone weak enough for him to control and strong enough to see off rivals—an unlikely combination.

Perhaps he will try to cling to power, as Deng Xiaoping did behind the scenes as head of the
China Bridge Association, and Mr Xi may intend to overtly, having conspicuously avoided naming a successor after this week’s party congress.

Yet, even if Mr Putin became the éminence grise of the Russian Judo Federation, it would only delay the fatal moment. Without the mechanism of a real democracy to legitimise someone new, the next ruler is likely to emerge from a power struggle that could start to tear Russia apart. In a state with nuclear weapons, that is alarming.

The stronger Mr Putin is today, the harder he will find it to manage his succession. As the world tries to live with that paradox, it should remember that nothing is set in stone.

A century ago the Bolshevik revolution was seen as an endorsement of Marx’s determinism. In the event, it proved that nothing is certain and that history has its own tragic irony.

Source: The Economist
血要热 头脑要冷 骨头要硬
behappyalways
Millionaire Boss
 
Posts: 39914
Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:43 pm

Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 17)

Postby winston » Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:39 pm

WATCH THIS COUNTRY'S STOCKS AS THINGS GET 'LESS BAD'

Today's chart highlights a beaten-down market that's starting to climb...

Regular readers know Steve coined the term "bad-to-less-bad trading" several years ago. If you buy assets dirt-cheap when no one is left to sell, you can make massive profits as the market returns to normal – that is, when things simply get "less bad." Right now, we can see this at work in Russian stocks...

The VanEck Vectors Russia Fund (RSX) holds some of the country's biggest companies. It tracks a basket of 31 stocks, with its largest holdings in the energy, materials, and financials sectors...

And it's one of the easiest ways for Americans to invest in Russia. From its 2013 peak to its 2016 low, RSX plunged more than 60%. But then oil prices bottomed, Russian energy stocks stopped falling, and things got "less bad"...

Since then, RSX has exploded into an uptrend. Shares are up nearly 85% from last year's lows, and they're trading close to 52-week highs. Pay attention – this could be the start of the next rally in Russian stocks...

Source: Daily Wealth
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118522
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 17)

Postby winston » Thu Nov 30, 2017 12:07 pm

Russia Warns Washington: Confiscating Gold Reserves Would Be “Declaration Of Financial War”

In a surprising, and unexpected warning – which seemingly came out of nowhere – Russia’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov cautioned Washington yesterday

As a reminder, in June, Reuters reported that soon after the Crimea reunification with Russia, the Central Bank of Russia allegedly withdrew about $115 billion from the New York Fed.


Source: TTR

http://www.thetradingreport.com/2017/11 ... 2-91746477
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118522
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 17)

Postby winston » Mon Mar 12, 2018 3:39 pm

Chart of the day: Russian stocks on upward trend

by Nicole Elliott

On the coming Sunday, the first round of Russia’s presidential election will take place.

Incumbent Vladimir Putin is well ahead in the polls, with approval ratings consistently well above 40 per cent, but he is not leaving anything to chance with an active campaign.

From a low base in the second quarter of 2017, the Moscow Exchange’s index of its 50 most liquid shares has rallied steadily in a series of neat steps.

Unlike other European bourses, February’s upset has been minimal and it is currently trading only fractionally below the previous week’s record high.

Support from the moving averages, the trend channel and the Ichimoku cloud will hopefully keep things on track to go successively higher.

Source: SCMP

http://www.scmp.com/business/markets/ar ... ward-trend
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118522
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 17)

Postby winston » Fri Apr 20, 2018 10:43 am

Russia’s Real Endgame

Putin seeks what Russia has always sought: regional hegemony and a set of buffer states in eastern Europe and central Asia that can add to Russia’s strategic depth.

In Syria, Russia has the warm water port of Tartus — which is important when you consider that most Russian ports are ice-bound for months of the year.

Russian military intervention in Crimea and eastern Ukraine is best understood not as a Russian initiative, but as a Russian reaction. It was a response to U.S. and U.K. efforts to attack Russia by pushing aggressively and prematurely for Ukraine membership in NATO. This was done by deposing a Putin ally in Kiev in early 2014.

His long game involves the accumulation of gold, development of alternative payments systems, and ultimate demise of the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency.


Source: DAILY RECKONING

http://www.thetradingreport.com/2018/04 ... l-endgame/
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118522
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 17)

Postby winston » Sun May 06, 2018 9:17 pm

Savvy Investors Could Make a Lot of Money Investing in These Stocks

by Nicolas Vardy

VanEck Vectors Russia ETF (NYSE: RSX)


Source: Investment U

http://dailytradealert.com/2018/05/06/s ... se-stocks/
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118522
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 18)

Postby winston » Thu May 17, 2018 2:34 pm

Trump Issues Sanctions Proposal for Alleged Russia Missile Treaty Violations

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - US President Donald Trump issued a memo on Wednesday ordering State Secretary Mike Pompeo to propose sanctions on Russia in response to alleged violations of a 1987 missile treaty.

Source: Sputnik

https://sputniknews.com/us/201805171064 ... sanctions/
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118522
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 18)

Postby behappyalways » Mon Jun 18, 2018 4:48 pm

2018.06.17【文茜世界財經週報】辦世足成功突破西方經濟制裁 難改邪惡印象
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scVLZgK ... dex=4&t=0s
血要热 头脑要冷 骨头要硬
behappyalways
Millionaire Boss
 
Posts: 39914
Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:43 pm

Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 18)

Postby winston » Tue Jun 19, 2018 8:50 am

Russia cuts Treasury holdings in half as foreigners start losing appetite for US debt

Foreign governments have pared back their holdings of U.S. debt, reducing the total by nearly $10 billion in March and April.

Russia was notable among the group stepping back with a nearly 50 percent cut.

The U.S. government needs buyers of its debt as the Fed continues to reduce its holdings and the budget deficit is projected to surge in coming years.

Russia sliced its holdings of U.S. debt nearly in half from March to April, from $96.1 billion to $48.7 billion. Russia's Treasury ownership peaked at $108.7 billion in May 2017.

In all, foreigners held $6.17 trillion of the total $14.84 trillion of Treasury debt outstanding through April.

The national debt including intragovernmental holdings has swelled to more than $21 trillion.

China, the largest owner of U.S. debt, reduced its level by $5.8 billion in April to $1.18 trillion, while Japan, the second largest, cut its holdings by $12.3 billion to $1.03 trillion. Ireland, the U.K. and Switzerland also pulled back.


by Jeff Cox

Source: CNBC

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/russia- ... KW,1LGN4,1
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118522
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

PreviousNext

Return to AMERICAS & EUROPE: Data, News & Commentaries

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests