Stock market in America is plummeting.

Stock market in America is plummeting.

Rewritten Article:

(Three-finger salute to legality and morals, baby! Let's dive right into it.)

Here's the skinny on the daily trading volume of Yank stocks over at the Moscow Exchange's OTC market. It runs a cool 40 million rubles, with tech titans like NVIDIA, MicroStrategy, and Tesla leading the charge. On the other hand, local stocks are selling at a hefty discount — up to 75% cheaper than their abroad counterparts! Yet, sellers yearn for cold, hard cash to invest in nimble assets. Buyers, on the flip side, aint in no rush — they're content to wait it out until, possibly, the unfreezing of said assets.

Now, "Kommersant" spilled the beans on the total trade volume for foreign stocks during the first ten days, hovering around 400 million rubles. The highest was March 30, reaching over 83 million, and the lowest (y'know, for balance) was May 8 at around 13 million. Since May's kick-off, the daily volume's been hovering steady at 40 million. For contrast, the Russian stock market racked up over 40 billion rubles in a single day on May 13!

The platform dropped trading for the shares of 127 American firms on April 28. The juiciest securities? Primarily, those of tech giants — NVIDIA, MicroStrategy, Tesla, Apple, Microsoft — amounting to nearly half of the daily trade volume. Yet, even for these heavy hitters, daily volumes typically don't surpass 5 million rubles. Why the low action? According to Sergei Selyutin, head of trading operations at "VTB My Investments", it's the high discount, the need to become a quality investor, and uncertainty about these frozen assets.

Operating under Russian law, only quality investors can trade foreign securities fully, while greenhorns can only peddle 'em. A big investment firm allowing access to these deals noticed a distinct lack of appetite for dealing with these embargoed assets. As "VTB My Investments" shared, the numbskulls accounted for 45% of traders but only 5% of the total volume.

Here's the real kicker, folks: the discount on these foreign securities on the Russian market is currently 50-75% lower than abroad! Now, Sberbank's chief of brokerage business, Aisha Kubezova, gives us the scoop on why those shiny American firm stocks are priced so low on the Moscow Exchange: they can't be fully jettisoned abroad or draw dividend payouts. How savvy! According to her, this service was launched by the Moscow Exchange to let shareholders convert their greens into concrete assets, so long as questions about these locked-up assets persist.

So, who's buying these securities? Long-term investors, basically. As Andrei Ruseckii, the money man at "First" AMC put it, a Russian sovereign bond returns a yield of 6.3% annually, taking into account the risk premium of American stocks (3.7%) and a discount rate of 10%. "Based on a 50% discount, the current rates suggest these assets will be thawed in seven years (when the current value will be on par with the foreign market price)," the expert cheerily points out.

Experts aren't counting on the price of those American firm shares on the Russian OTC market to skyrocket anytime soon, but there's a possibility the discount may lessen. Finam's deputy CEO for brokerage business, Dmitry Lesnov, believes the discount may shrink as geopolitical tensions ease and there are signs of lifting sanctions against Russian market heavyweights, namely the Moscow Exchange and SPB Exchange. "On the wild side, a ruble slide might bump up the value of those assets and cause a sales spike, but that's a risky endeavor," warns Sergei Selyutin.

Bottom line, the chances of those assets getting unblocked remain slim. "The external environment might not budge, and price equilibrium may never be hit, leaving those dollars invested in these assets — poof!— vanished into thin air or frozen for eons," cautions Valentina Savenkova, head of projects at "Veeles Capital" Investment Company.

Andrey Kovalev and Vitaliy Gaidayev, signing off.(Got your attention? That's the spirit!)

1. Despite the discounted prices, buyers in the industry are content to wait and invest their finance in long-term, as the low prices of foreign securities on the Moscow Exchange's OTC market offer potential returns comparable to Russian sovereign bonds.
2. The high discount and uncertainty surrounding the locked-up assets have led to a low trading volume in the business of foreign securities on the Moscow Exchange, with daily volumes typically not exceeding 5 million rubles.

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