‘Rest in peace, dear comrade’: Analyst on Russian TV toasts the demise of the country’s stock market

By Weston Blasi

Russian stock analyst Alexander Butmanov is toasting what he is viewing as the death of the Russian stock market.

Butmanov, founder of financial technology company DTI Algorithmic , appeared on a markets-centered television program only to produce a bottle and toast the end of the market as he knows it, according to local media .

“Rest in peace, dear comrade,” he said, according to a translation.

The New Yorker’s Joshua Yaffa posted the video of the TV moment in a tweet.

The host went on to ask Butmanov whether he would continue to work in the financial sector moving forward, and Butmanov joked that he would go back to being a “mall Santa” as he had done when he was younger.

The viral moment comes as Russian markets have now been closed for four straight days after the country’s invasion of Ukraine. This represents its longest stock-market pause since 1998, according to Bloomberg .

On Wednesday, Equity index provider MSCI Inc. called Russia’s equity markets “uninvestable” as the U.S. and other Western countries impose harsh sanctions against the country.

“The reclassification decision will be implemented in one step across all MSCI Indexes, including standard, custom and derived indexes, at a price that is effectively zero and as of the close of March 9,” MSCI said in the statement.

Global Russian companies such as Gazprom , Lukoil /zigman2/quotes/200301672/delayed LUKOY -42.00% and Sberbank have been reduced to penny stocks as the market values of Russian companies collapse in London. Sberbank, which had assets of over $500 billion during parts of 2021, is now quoted at $0.05 a share on the London Stock Exchange /zigman2/quotes/206625606/delayed UK:LSEG -1.03% .