This isn't a global crisis—it's a Russian one. As the S&P 500 surges 15%, the MOEX has evaporated billions, revealing an economy built on artillery shells, not fundamentals.
(October 27, 2025) – While Wall Street pops champagne to celebrate new market highs, the Russian MOEX index is behaving as if it just discovered gravity.
In a stark tale of two economies, the U.S. market is thriving, while Moscow’s is in a state of catastrophic collapse. Since February, Russia's stock market has seen tens of billions of dollars incinerated, taking the last vestiges of investor confidence with it.
This is not a global contagion. This is a uniquely Russian crisis.
While the U.S. S&P 500 is up a robust 15% year-to-date, Russia’s MOEX index has plummeted by nearly 20%. The United States is printing profits; Russia is only printing excuses.
The Illusion of a Wartime "Boom"
President Vladimir Putin has recently boasted of 4% economic growth, citing it as "proof of strength" and resilience against Western sanctions. But this figure is a dangerous illusion.
This so-called growth is not driven by innovation, consumer demand, or private enterprise. It is funded entirely by wartime spending. The factories running at full capacity are not making consumer goods; they are churning out tanks, artillery shells, and munitions.
While the military-industrial complex burns through the state budget, the civilian economy is suffocating. It is being starved of capital, deprived of labor, and cut off from new orders. You cannot build a sustainable, investable economy on a foundation of explosives.
The 'Economic Quarantine Zone'
The devastating impact of sanctions has turned Russia into a global "economic quarantine zone."
Western investors fled en masse. Now, even a-once-neutral China is growing fearful of secondary sanctions, and business is drying up. In a more alarming development, reports indicate that Indian oil refineries—critical buyers of Russian crude—are "disappearing without a goodbye," quietly shifting their purchases to other partners.
Oil revenue was Russia's final lifeline. Now, even that is being choked off, not just by sanctions, but by a lack of trust.
The Internal Rot
Inside Russia, the domestic picture is just as bleak. Runaway inflation is eviscerating wages, forcing the central bank to maintain crippling interest rates of over 20%.
Worse, the Putin government has embarked on a campaign of nationalizing private enterprises, seizing companies in the name of "patriotism." The administration seems to believe this will manufacture growth, but it has only succeeded in triggering a final, panicked stampede for the exits.
When the state can confiscate your assets at any moment, you are not an investor—you are a gambler betting against a rigged house.
The government continues to insist that "everything is fine, the ruble is stable." But this is a "stability" where your currency buys less at the grocery store every single week, and your brokerage account looks like a crime scene.
Confidence has left Moscow. It is not coming back.
From Freefall to Evaporation
The consequences are now rippling through what's left of the real economy. Factories are cutting production, private businesses are going bankrupt, and investors are watching their net worth vaporize in real-time.
The MOEX index is no longer just falling; it is evaporating.
While the United States is riding an "AI rocket" into a new era of technological progress, Russia is busy digging its own economic grave. War, sanctions, and national self-delusion do not create prosperity—they just make poverty look patriotic.
When the smoke finally clears, there will be no "miraculous recovery" waiting. There will only be a cold, hard reminder: You cannot bomb your way to a bull market.