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Summary RSX is down over 50% since the beginning of 2011, suggesting attractive expected returns. Russian equities offer diversification benefit to U.S. investors. However, high volatility of such an investment means that the actual portfolio risk contribution will be 2.5-3 times higher than its portfolio weight. I was recently browsing Research Affiliates Asset Allocation website and one chart that drew my attention was the forecast real 10-year expected return. As can be seen from the histogram below, projected returns by Research Affiliates models for various countries and regions differ widely with Russia comfortably offering the highest expected reward: (click to enlarge) This prompted me to explore how a modest allocation to Russian equities affects a typical portfolio held by a U.S. investor. For the purpose of this article, I use the 60/40 portfolio as a proxy for a “standard” allocation (even though I still think it is flawed ), with the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (NYSEARCA: SPY ) representing equities and the Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF (NYSEARCA: BND ) – fixed income. While ETFdb lists 6 Russian equity ETFs available in the U.S., the Market Vectors Russia ETF (NYSEARCA: RSX ) is the obvious choice given that its $2 billion of assets under management is almost 4 times more than the remaining funds have combined. Portfolio impact To start with, assume that we allocate 5% of the equities portion in the 60/40 portfolio to RSX. Analyzing 5 years of historical data, risk parameters of such a portfolio look as follows: (click to enlarge) Source: InvestSpy Retrospectively, such an investment would have been a real drag in a portfolio that otherwise had a stellar performance. RSX has lost 45% of its value over the last 5 years and experienced a whopping 65% drawdown. Furthermore, its annualized volatility stood at 34%, which was more than twice that of SPY. This lead to a significant risk contribution of 14% to the overall portfolio risk despite the allocation of only 5%. On the bright side, further inspection of the correlation matrix suggests that RSX has the potential to offer diversification benefits. Its correlations were 0.67 with SPY and negative 0.21 with BND (see the table below). In fact, the correlation coefficient with SPY was even lower at 0.47 over the last 12 months. Source: InvestSpy As demonstrated in this whitepaper by Salient Partners, a diversifier with high volatility is among the most powerful tools an investors has. And RSX definitely ticks the high volatility box. At the same time, it is highly unlikely that a U.S. investor would want to have 10%+ of their portfolio risk come from Russia. An investment in any Russian ETF will have 2.5-3 times higher risk contribution than its portfolio weight, thus I would not suggest a higher allocation than 2-3% of your portfolio to RSX or a related fund. One also has to bear in mind that Russian stocks will typically be included in most emerging markets ETFs and mutual funds, thus you may already have some exposure to this country. Under the hood Comparing the sector breakdown of RSX and SPY, it becomes apparent that Russian and American markets have completely different composition: RSX is largely dominated by the energy sector (43%), whilst oil & gas stocks account for only 7% of S&P 500. RSX is also heavily loaded with Materials (19%) but lacks more significant presence of companies operating in IT, health care, consumer discretionary or industrials sectors. Given that Russian stock market is so dependent on the energy sector, I have also checked how correlated to the oil price it is. Using t he United States Oil ETF, LP (NYSEARCA: USO ) as a proxy for the oil market, it turns out that over the last 5 years RSX had correlation with USO of 0.53. Although this reading does not seem exceptionally high at a first glance, I have previously shown that a coefficient above 0.5 comfortably puts RSX among top 5 single country ETFs to benefit from oil price recovery. Conclusion Russian stocks have been in a downward spiral since 2011, currently offering attractive valuations compared with other countries. RSX regained 10% in the last month and is a primary target to benefit from a potential reversal in the oil market. If the actual performance of Russian equities comes anywhere close to the returns forecast by Research Affiliates, RSX may very well be a welcome addition to your portfolio. Scalper1 News
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