Tuesday's sell-off on the Russian equity market comes at a time when investor sentiment has already been damaged by the military conflict between Russia and Georgia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's recent call for an investigation of steel company Mechel, which wiped out billions of dollars of its market capitalization, as well as by the ongoing dispute between BP PLC and their Russian partners in their joint venture TNK-BP.
On top of all of those concerns, the prices of Russia's key commodity exports -- such as oil, natural gas and metals -- have fallen steeply in recent weeks.
Russian equities have fallen on a "combination of geopolitical disruption and state interference [in the economy] that many people don't feel comfortable with," said Jack Dzierwa, global strategist and co-manager of the Global MegaTrends Fund at U.S. Global Investors.
Nobody ever expects a boom - even one predicated on the notoriously inconsistent prices of a commodity like crude oil - to end, I guess.
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