Russian Investor Statistics - Inflows Continue Apace

Moscow Exchange has published retail investor statistics for February. Retail investors bought R29.5 bln (nearly $400 mln) in Russian stock, a touch higher than the previous month's R28.5 bln. Meanwhile, these two months have only offset half the outflow seen in November, when R151 bln was sold to institutionals, primarily nonresidents.Mutual fund inflows picked up from the previous R28 bln to R37 bln (nearly $520 mln). We conservatively estimate one third of this figure was directed into stocks.Institutional data from EPFR Global indicates some $442 mln came into Russia in the first three weeks of the month. Combined with the retail and Russian fund data, this may indicate that less-tracked fund categories - e.g. hedge and sovereign wealth funds - were on the selling side. However, the available institutional data also does not yet include the market's weak last week of February.The number of brokerage accounts grew at the fastest pace (9%) in four months, reaching 10.4 mln in February. Active accounts (those making at least one trade a month) climbed to over 1.6 mln, a pace in line with the account openings.Top 10 stocks in the aggregate retail investor portfolioNoticeable adjustments in the top 10 stocks in the aggregate portfolio this month included a 3.2 pp gain for Nornickel, a 3.1 pp cut for Sber commons, and a 1.3 pp decline for Mail.ru Group. Nornickel was among the market's weakest performers price-wise, with a 2.7% decline in February versus the RTS's 6.1% gain. Hence, this continues the trend of the retail portfolio taking up recent underperformers. Also significant was the appearance of Polymetal in the top 10 with 7.1% - it had not made the top 10 previously, and was another February underperformer price-wise, having dropped more than 8%. Exiting the top 10 was VTB - it had been in 10th place in the portfolio for two months running, most recently at 6.2%, and now has dropped below the threshold the same month the stock gained more than 4%.