Who Would Have Guessed? Russia is the Best Performing, and Cheapest, Country Index YTD
Raise your hand if you thought Russia would be the best performing country index through roughly the first half of 2015? I imagine there aren’t too many digital hands up right now…
On an equal-weighted, USD basis, Russia is 31.5% higher this year. It has outpaced the second best performing country, Hungary, by nearly 10%. China H-shares are in third place higher by almost 20%, with Portugal (15%) and Israel (14%) rounding out the top five. The United States, prior to today’s burst, is the 19th best performing country index. Greece, sadly, is once again the worst performer. The Greek stock market is already down nearly 37% year-to-date.
Top 10 Performing Country Indexes
Like we said in the title, again on an equal-weighted, USD basis, Russia is also the cheapest country index out there from a price to cash flow perspective. It currently trades at just 4.5x cash flow. To put that in more perspective, only 9 out of 46 countries currently have price to cash flow below 10x and five countries (Switzerland, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, and India) have a price to cash ratio above 20x. The US is currently trading at 16.9x cash flow.
10 Cheapest Country Indexes
10 Most Expensive Country Indexes
There are only 21 individual companies that make up our Russia index. Eight of the companies are energy companies, four are materials, four are telecom, three are financials and there is one consumer staple and one utility company.
Russia Index Broken Down By Sector
Lastly, the year-to-date performance of these companies are below.
