That led to a closing loss of 1.7% for the S&P Composite and to broadly based losses in Asian markets today. The Nikkei is off 1.7%, China is down 1.3% and Australia is 1.0% weaker. The US ended at the level it was at when Moscow closed so there should be only a relatively small opening weakness for Russian stocks. How the market closes later today will depend on the US market follow through. There are now economic reports with any market significance due in the US or EU today. Hence typical end summer low volume price twitching. The price of crude is trading close to yesterday’s closing level. WTI is at $74.44 p/bbl and Brent is at $75.32 p/bbl. The dollar-euro rate is at $1.280 and gold last traded at $1,234.1 per ounce. Gold shares and defensive domestic stocks were the relatively better performers yesterday and that trend is likely to extend further this morning, albeit with little conviction. Polyus and Polymetal have been recent under-performers and should continue to play some catch-up. The weekly fund flows report from EPFR Global shows that while investor appetite for emerging market exposure remains intact, there is increased nervousness about individual country exposure. The GEM Balanced fund category reported new money inflow of $2,249 million, up from last week’s $1,612 million and the biggest weekly inflow of 2010. But, China funds, which had been investor’s favourite since the start of the 2nd half, reported net outflows of $47 million and Russia funds, investor’s favourite through the 1st half year, reported outflows of $74 million. Brazil funds, which have reported net redemptions in 2010 to date, were one of the few country fund categories to report new money last week. They took in $147 million. In Emerging Europe, the relative preference for Turkey over Russia continues and although this week’s Turkey fund inflow of $2 million is very modest, it contrasts favourably with the large outflow from Russia funds. The 2nd Qtr Foreign Direct Investment report again shows how little money Russia is attracting from international investors and tough is the task facing the government to attract funds into new industries and projects. The total of FDI for the 2nd Qtr was only $5.5 bln. That was 11% less than the total received for the same quarter in 2009 and, annualised, represents only about 1.5% of GDP. Compare that with the almost 10% of GDP reported previously for the other so-called BRIC countries. And most of the money coming into Russia is from locations that are traditionally sources of round-tripping Russian money, e.g. Cyprus and Dutch Antilles. The amount of actual non-Russian sourced FDI is currently negligible. Vimpelcom again hit. Moscow’s bourses held steady with a small gain for most of yesterday’s session before the weaker than expected US numbers knocked all global markets. MICEX fell almost 1.5% over the last hours of trade to close the session at 1,375.1 and a loss of 0.8%. The RTS lost 0.9%, at 1,445.7. In the London GDR market, the IOB Index ended down 0.9%. The banks and Gazprom led the decline in Moscow as traders hit the most liquid names as a reaction to the US trend. Sberbank lost 1.5% and Gazprom finished its MICEX session off 1.4%. Polyus was one of the few big name stocks to close with a gain, rising 2.0% on MICEX. IT was a similar story in London, with few major moves beyond the average. Novatek was one of those, rising 1.7% to close at $76.8. Polyus and Polymetal also gained, rising 0.8% and 1.3% respectively. The domestic stocks also performed relatively better than the high-beta exporters as investors moved more defensively. X Five and Pharmstandard closed up 2.4% each. In the US ADR market, Vimpelcom continues to suffer from reports of a possible bid in North Africa. Its shares fell 3.4% while MTS ended down 0.5%. Chris Weafer is the Chief Strategist for Uralsib group