How Markets Misread Putin

摘要

GLOBAL EQUITY INVESTORS ARE TAKING THEIR CUES ON RUS-sia from the headlines about Yukos, which portrays President Putin as a dictator destroying the nation's most efficient oil company. Indeed Moscow is now the cheapest stock market in the world, trading at a 50 percent discount to other emerging markets, with a price-to-earnings ratio of 6.3. The earnings yield of Russian companies, or their earnings divided by their stock price, is rising, reflecting a growing fear of holding Russian stock. In thelast two weeks, anticipating what everyone expects will be a guilty verdict in the trial of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the market fell 7 percent more.