Russia Leading the BRIC Rally

The last time I checked in with the BRIC countries, four months ago, the issue de jour was BRIC Update: China a Leader or an Outlier? At that time, China was starting to move impressively off of an October bottom and Russia was a notable laggard.

As the chart below shows, in the five weeks since the U.S. stock indices have bottomed, it is Russia (RSX, red line) that has been the strongest performer, followed by India (EPI, blue line), with Brazil (EWZ, gold line) and China (FXI, black line) bringing up the rear.

I watch these relationships closely for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to determine how well the group as a whole is performing, if any particular country is separating itself from the pack, whether commodity producers or consumers are in favor, etc.

Part of the reason Russia has bounced more than its BRIC counterparts is that Russia suffered disproportionately in the recent bear market. In the nine months from June 2008 to February 2009, the RSX Russian ETF lost more than 82% of its value. The last month, however, has seen some notable improvements. Russia’s credit default swaps, for instance, which reflect to the cost to insure the country’s debt, have improved from 694 to 412 in the last four weeks as the outlook for that country’s sovereign debt has improved dramatically.

Going forward, country-specific trends may continue to dominate, but I suspect the relative performance of Russia and Brazil will say more about improvements in the commodities market as a whole than about the plight of a particular national economy.

[source: BigCharts]