Russia proving to be best BRICS bet this year

London

WHICH country would you invest in: a fast-growing economic powerhouse with a world-beating stock market or a tottering former superpower embroiled in a proxy war and heading for a recession?

If at the start of 2015 you had chosen the second, Russia, you would be walking away with risk-adjusted returns surpassing that of the first, China, and also every other BRICS country, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

While that looked counterintuitive at the time, as plunging oil prices and a currency slump weighed on Moscow's US$456 billion market, the tables have turned in these seven months. Crude's rebound from a six-year …