Russian assets nosedive, billions swept from stock market value
A woman walks near an exchange office screen showing the currency exchange rates of the U.S. dollar and the euro to Russian rubles, Moscow, Russia, Feb. 22, 2022. (AP Photo)


The crash in the Russian stock market after the country’s President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine wiped out roughly $259 billion in value.

Russian banks and oil companies were among the hardest hit in volatile trading.

The country’s largest lender, Sberbank, at one point lost 57%, while oil giant Rosneft plunged as much as 58%.

Gazprom, which is the energy giant behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that was recently halted, was down 40%.

The Moscow Exchange, MOEX, Russia’s benchmark stock index, was down almost 30% in a day from its October peak on Thursday.

The index suffered its worst day since the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.

The dollar-denominated RTS Index, which has identical component stocks as MOEX, meanwhile, was down as much as 33%, the largest intraday drop in history near the open.

The MOEX announced on Thursday that it has suspended trading on all of its markets until further notice.

The country’s credit-default swap premium also soared above 750.

Stocks and the national currency pared some losses in early afternoon trading. The ruble was down 3.6% at 84.225 as of 12:59 p.m. (9:59 a.m. GMT) after diving as much as 9.4%. The country's central bank said it was intervening to "stabilize the situation."

The MOEX index later trimmed its loss to 25%.