Indexes Finish Week With Mild Rebound

How the mighty have fallen.

The MICEX and the dollar-denominated RTS, which was touted at the beginning of the month as the world's best-performing equity index, and are again in bear territory.

While neither is close to the January doldrums, both are already feeling pangs of a correction that will either smart like ripping off a bandage or burn -- like fourth-quarter 2008.

By June 23, the MICEX had lost 24 percent from its postcrisis high on June 1, while the RTS fell 20.1 percent during the same period. Though some, like Deutsche Bank chief economist Yaroslav Lissovolik, are predicting a brief one or two weeks of volatility, others such as Alexander Zakharov, head of equities at Metropol, say the MICEX is looking to decline to as low as 850, either in a sharp sell-off or gradually.

"If there's going to be lots of negative news coming out in one day, we might meet those levels quite quickly. Or we might just get to those levels slowly over the course of the summer and maybe bounce up once in a while quite strongly," Zakharov said.

Even the past few days might be viewed as a bit of a rebound. The MICEX gained back 42.9 points, or 4.7 percent, between Tuesday and Friday, finishing the week down 5.6 percent at 960.2 points.

The RTS gained back 22.7 points, or 2.4 percent, closing at 955.5 points Friday with a 5.5 percent loss for the week.

The volatility that has come to characterize the past few days can be attributed to the lack of certainty in the market, Zakharov said. While the beginning of the decline two weeks ago prompted a flurry of panicked selling, different investors were in turn using the chaos to serve as speculators.

"Market participants kind of hesitate on the levels and valuations -- some people sell just because they're panicked and believe they wouldn't be able to take profit, and vice-versa, some people use that panic as an opportunity to pick stuff up," he said.

Sberbank finished the week down 3.6 percent on MICEX after oscillating between session gains and losses of as high as 5 percent.

MICEX's other movers were the oil and gas companies, which all reported heavy losses. LUKoil finished down 7 percent, Rosneft lost 7.9 percent and Surgutneftegaz fell 8.6 percent.

While those losses don't bode well for the short term, investors have enough money in reserve and they should be in relatively good positions if a rebound appears in sight, Lissovolik said.

"There are these resources on the sidelines that could be readily employed once the correction is seen to be overshooting," Lissovolik said.

According to figures from Hedge Fund Research, funds focusing on emerging markets and energy saw the strongest gains in May, with Russia-focused funds among the top performers.

Firebird's New Russia Fund posted one of the strongest gains, rising 40 percent for the month after a 75 percent decline for the period from September to January.

While the fund is "gratified" to be doing better, co-founder Ian Hauge said, it is still a long way away from last year's levels. Coming off 2008's decline, even a 100 percent gain can be easy, he said.

"Over the last year, I've come to the conclusion that Russia, like a lot of other assets, was a derivative of this global credit bubble and drilling down through the actual investment case, the idea that Russian assets could be valued 12 to 15 times earnings is an absurdity," Hague said. "I hope the market never again deludes itself that that is fair value."

MICEX stocks are trading at an average price-to-earnings ratio of 6.2, while the RTS is running at about 5.9 times earnings.

While Firebird was riding the blue chips like everyone else during the rally, now the fund is steering away from them, hoping to find profit in "well-run companies with less liquid stocks," Hague said.

"The way people are going to make money in the stock market is mispricings of overlooked sectors and companies. It's not going to be the general rise of the market itself," Hague said.