Troika Dialog has launched an open-ended index fund called Troika Dialog – Index RTS Standard.

Shares in the fund will begin trading in the Standard section of the RTS exchange on 1 August 2010.

This is the first index fund in the Troika Dialog Asset Management product line and the first fund on Russia’s collective investments market tracking the RTS Standard index, the tabulation of which began on 23 April 2009.  

The fund allows investors to perform stock market trading in a basket of securities, and, unlike other index funds, will be characterised by high market liquidity. Driving the liquidity will be Troika Dialog Investment Company, acting as market maker for the fund’s shares in the trading section RTS Standard and maintaining bilateral quotes. The target spread between the bid and ask prices is 5-10 basis points (bps).

The principal task of the fund managers is to replicate the RTS Standard index and minimise tracking errors, which are to be kept below 0.5 per cent annually. For comparison, existing open-ended index funds over the previous 12 months diverged on average from the target index by 3.5 per cent.

The RTS Standard index currently includes securities in the 15 most liquid and highly-capitalised firms on the Russian equity market, including Gazprom, Sberbank, Lukoil, Rosneft, OJSC Surgutneftegas, MMC Norilsk Nickel, JSC RusHydro, JSC FGC UES, Uralkali and others.  

Anton Rakhmanov, managing director at Troika Dialog Asset Management, says: “The launch of exchange-traded fund ‘Troika Dialog – Index RTS Standard’ is timelier now than ever. Assessing the Russian market’s prospects, one could say it is undervalued in comparison with other world platforms. Furthermore, the Russian market has only a limited supply of ETFs, while none of the foreign ETFs offered by the global banks reflect the structure of the local RTS and MICEX indexes. This is one more reason why Troika Dialog AM’s new fund will elicit demand and succeed in meeting the needs of myriad investors.”