Anyone else taking a risk on Russian ETFs?

Been buying HSBC’s MSCI Russia ETF. I know it’s not exactly popular to buy any stocks within Russia but this is buying shares of a ETF that already has stocks in Russia, so it’s not like I’m directly funding the Russian administration. Regardless, most of their holdings are in Russian gas and oil, and taps haven’t yet been turned off. Seems like a good opportunity to buy shares at a bargain price in the hopes they’ll boom post-conflict. Anyone else been doing the same?

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No, but it’s an interesting idea. Throws up a number of considerations surrounding risk and morality.

It seems to be blocked on Freetrade now, I’m unable to buy/sell it in my ISA and it doesn’t appear in the GIA section either.

Hi all,

A number of ETFs that hold Russian assets have been suspended from trading on the LSE and we’ve reflected these changes in our app. Specifically the following ETFs are impacted:

|LU0322252502|XMRC|
|IE00B5LJZQ16|HRUB|
|IE00B0M63953|IEER|

If you hold positions you won’t be able to sell while trading is suspended. This is a suspension implemented on the exchange that we are reflecting.

If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out here or to customer service in the app.

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Yeah I noticed yesterday - would’ve been nice to be have been notified (via the app).

I actually got a notification @BullRun

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Did it come at the end of the day? I got a notification about 30 minutes ago (6:30pm) for Evraz being suspended, at which point the suspension had already been in effect for several hours.

I got it fairly early on … I had a limit buy order on for Monday, which got cancelled at 7am Monday… So knew then… Not long after that, I got the notification.

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I own 1 share of IEER. I took a large loss but this has been absorbed by other assets in my portfolio.

I held it on the Ex date for dividends, will I still get a dividend or are dividends suspended as well as trading on these ETFS?

No biggie either way as I only had one share and March, June September and December are Dividend fests for me.

I’ve coined a new word, Dividend Fest.

Don’t give Putin any more money.
He’s only going to nuke us all anyway.
:face_exhaling:

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Well yes, “only” indirectly. :face_exhaling:

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This guy bought and kept buying into a Russian ETF before the invasion thinking it wouldn’t happen.

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He won’t. I know this is a throw away comment and I’m sorry if these seems like an over reaction but I it an opportunity to remind people thar

Putin hasn’t gone insane, he’s not a madman. I feel fairly safe on saying that we disagree on what he’s doing and how but he’s been talking about this for type of issue for the 15 years.

He views himself as Tsar Vladimir looking to returning Russian to its 16th-18th century glory. If anyone would like to know more on this Tsarist point I would recommend listing to Niall Ferguson (Twitter nfergus) of the post recent Prof G podcast

Thank you for listening to my ramble and have a lovely Sunday not worrying about nukes falling from the skies

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Plenty of informed people - many of which have interacted with him for years - think he has very literally gone insane.
I’d rather have people prepare for a potentially humanity-ending possibility, even if it’s slimmer than the other possibilities than go full what’s bad can’t be true :see_no_evil: :hear_no_evil: .
Never go full escapism.

My point is: never be so absolute in your judgement when you literally have no idea what’s really going on - none whatsoever (like me).

If you kill 15 000 Britons for no reason whatsoever (as he did with his own soldiers), every single person would claim you’re deranged and insane. But when the head of state does it with no reason whatsoever, it suddenly isn’t?

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I suppose its about how you define insanity:

insanity - relatively permanent disorder of the mind; state or condition of being insane. law a defect of reason as a result of mental illness, such that a defendant does not know what he or she is doing or that it is wrong.

Does Putin know what he doing is wrong? Maybe he does so he’s not insane.

Does he think what he is doing is right? Then he could be considered insane.

You then need to define his actions, of course. As @SebReitz points out he’s a head of state. Does he think what he is doing is justifed to protect Russia and Russian influence?

Does this map scare him and Russians? To make rational/irrational decisions?

Further steps would need to be taken to get a more definitive answer if he’s insane or not. Could there be a biological/psychological reason. Perhaps checking his thyroid function, MRI scan, psyche questionnaires, etc.

Was Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Knan and all the other warlords in history insane? I suspect not. Putin took a calculated risk that hasn’t paid off to how he thought it might turn out. Prehaps he thought he would overwhelm Ukraine in a couple of weeks, maybe he thought the world wouldn’t pull together so much to condem his actions, after all, the world didn’t do much when he invaded South Ossetia and Crimea.

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Absolutely. He might have been misinformed after surrounding himself with yes men but which world leader hasn’t got to be on aware of sycophants?

The talk of nuclear weapons is all coming from Russia who are looking for a way out of this ‘miscalculation’ and the US / Europe are happy for this to continue a little longer as it is damaging Russia.

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Putin’s ‘way out’ will also scupper his wider plans of moving into Transnistria and Moldova as well.

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The video I saw was a Russian ambassador appearing to answer a question about Russia’s potential use of nuclear weapons. His response was that if Russia was under an existential threat then that is the only time that they can use them. The words may have been put in Russia’s mouth and used against them.

During these times, as any other, it is important to listen to the words out of the horses mouth, rather than the media re-interpretation of what is said for the benefit of propaganda and war rallying.

I agree with you about likelihood @NeilB but that is not to say that I am also not prepared. I believe that we may be closer to nuclear war than we ever have been, especially with additional players like NK sticking their oar in!

I believe that the West wanted the current situation and have carefully planned it. It may be the undoing of Putin and/or the beginning of a larger conflict and as others have said, we really have no idea of what is going on. The Western media haven’t even mentioned the fact that Ukraine has Europe’s largest deposit of Lithium and like other wars, we have to read between the lines.

Prepare for the worst and hope for the best!

“Chance favours the prepared mind” Louis Pasteur.

No idea how someone would claim that ‘the West’ wanted this without being indoctrinated by Telegram/RT level of conspiracy theories. That’s beyond help. :man_facepalming:
Only one person with illusions of grandeur wanted this: Putin. What you’re doing is victim blaming and defending the inhuman monster. Think about how insane that is :smiley: of course… the bad people of Ukraine are responsible for being killed and maimed because they want to be part of an economic political model that works instead of poverty and protected by NATO instead of being constantly attacked and threatened by a malevolent hegemon. Doesn’t that sound stupid to even you?

War is bad for everyone. Nobody in the West gives a flying f** about Russia. It’s a failed state only relevant for delivering primary products. Claiming nebulous reasons around some made-up issue like Lithium in Ukraine is classic conspiracy theory and actually an insult to the complexity of politics and human interaction.

I do recognise your passion and patriotism.

Just because someone has a different perspective though does not mean that they use specific digital platforms. I can see how you connected those dots but none of your assertions are true. I am quite open to discourse on most matters, as long as it is that.

This lecture from 2015 follows some of my reasoning. To presis, “If you really want to wreck Russia, what you should do is to encourage it to try to conquer Ukraine. Putin is much too smart to try that”.[77].

It appears that he might not be!