What if you bought RTS Index in 2000?
Countries · Russia. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play6.1× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
$1,000 in RTS Index at the start of 2000 would be worth about $6,111 today — 6.1 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
The RTS index tracks large Russian companies and, unusually, is quoted in US dollars, so it captures both share prices and the rouble in one number. After the 1998 default and devaluation, Russia entered the 2000s cheap and then rode a surging oil price: Gazprom, Lukoil, Sberbank and Norilsk Nickel turned the index into one of the world's best performers, up more than tenfold from 2000 to its 2008 peak. The Yukos affair in 2003, when the state dismantled the largest private oil company, was an early hint at who really held the cards.
The 2008 crash took the index down by roughly three-quarters as oil collapsed. After the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Western sanctions and falling oil sent the rouble and the RTS sharply down again. Then in February 2022, after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow trading was suspended for about a month, and foreign investors found their holdings frozen or effectively impossible to sell. A quoted index level is not much comfort if you cannot get your money out.
The lesson: Market prices assume you can sell; sanctions and capital controls can make a quoted value meaningless, a risk no volatility measure captures.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $180 | $6,111 | $4,626 | 6.1× |
| 2003 | $360 | $3,056 | $7,727 | 3.1× |
| 2005 | $610 | $1,803 | $5,763 | 1.8× |
| 2007 | $1,900 | $579 | $4,789 | 0.6× |
| 2008 | $2,300 | $478 | $4,626 | 0.5× |
| 2010 | $1,450 | $759 | $6,071 | 0.8× |
| 2012 | $1,400 | $786 | $5,312 | 0.8× |
| 2015 | $790 | $1,392 | $3,301 | 1.4× |
| 2018 | $1,150 | $957 | $2,519 | 1.0× |
| 2020 | $1,550 | $710 | $2,092 | 0.7× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2000, turning $1,000 into $6,111. The S&P 500 from that same year: $4,626.
On this day
- 24 February 2022: Russia invades Ukraine and its markets crash
- 17 August 1998: Russia devalues and defaults
- 25 December 1991: Gorbachev resigns and the Soviet Union ends
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. RTS Index is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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