Translation. Region: Russian Federal
Source: Moscow Exchange – Moscow Exchange –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
Why the stock market is actively growing and how to make money in 2025, Vladimir Krekoten told at VEF-2025.
Moscow Exchange is expanding and simplifying access to financial instruments for investors and issuers. Today, individuals and companies have new opportunities to increase their capital, including through collective investments and proprietary investment funds. And in September, Moscow Exchange plans to place public bonds on its platform together with regions of the Far East. Vladimir Krekoten, Managing Director of Moscow Exchange, told PrimaMedia about this in detail on the sidelines of the tenth anniversary Eastern Economic Forum (EEF, 16). — Vladimir Borisovich, the acceleration of economic growth is often discussed at the EEF. How does Moscow Exchange contribute to this process?
— Acceleration of economic growth is impossible without “long money”, and the capital market is precisely the infrastructure that allows these resources to be formed. Moscow Exchange is not just a trading platform, but one of the key mechanisms for transforming private and institutional savings into investments in the economy; it connects those who have capital with those who need it. The main task is to do this as efficiently as possible, to ensure maximum coverage of all participants in the investment process, to fill the platform with new categories of investors, including individuals, small and medium businesses. There are successes in this direction — largely due to the development of the collective investment market, funds and passive products.
— What priorities do you highlight in the work of the Moscow Exchange today?
— In 2025, we are focused on three priorities:
The first is the development of the capital market and assistance in increasing the capitalization of the Russian stock market. We expect that in the coming years, companies will continue to be interested in conducting IPOs and new names will appear on the stock market.
The second is collective investments. Today, almost 38 million Russians have brokerage accounts on the Moscow Exchange. This is a huge potential, but for it to really work for the economy, it is important to involve not only those who are already investing, but also those who are still keeping money on deposits. Conditions are being created on the market for some of these funds to flow into investments – and mutual funds are one of these conditions. The mutual fund platform is actively developing, the range of mutual funds is expanding, and in 2025 we launched proprietary funds managed by opinion leaders – as a way to make investments closer and more accessible.
The third priority is to increase financial literacy and develop a financial culture of both issuers and end investors. Without a conscious investor, it is impossible to build a mature market. Financial literacy is a bridge between a private investor and the market.
All of these are elements of a single system. Because capital market growth is not a matter of one instrument or trend. It is a complex: infrastructure, access, trust, training and protection.
— You mentioned that today almost 38 million Russians have brokerage accounts. But how active and mature are these investors? What is the portrait of a private investor today?
— Yes, today almost 38 million people have brokerage accounts on the Moscow Exchange, and this is a truly significant achievement in terms of the breadth of coverage. But, as you rightly noted, it is important to understand to what extent these accounts are used and who exactly is behind them.
Speaking of activity: over the past year and a half, an average of 4 million people have been making transactions every month. In 2024, 10.2 million investors were active on the stock market, this year – already 10.5 million for the rolling period from July to June. This is not only mass, but also sustainable involvement. Especially if compared with 2023 – then there were 7.6 million active investors.
By trading structure: in the first half of 2025, retail investors accounted for 73% of the trading volume in shares and 21% in bonds. This means that retail participants are not just present, they have a significant impact on the market.
But challenges remain. One of the key ones is the high concentration of assets. The bulk of capital is still concentrated in a relatively small, more experienced and wealthy group of investors. If we exclude “empty” accounts and those with less than 10 thousand rubles, the average account size is 2.2 million rubles.
For further development, we would like to see more active investors with medium portfolios — those who previously, perhaps, limited themselves to bank deposits. The potential here is huge: the population currently has more than 60 trillion rubles in deposits, and the segment of deposits from 3 to 10 million is growing the fastest. That is, there is money, the question is how to transfer it from passive accumulation to more meaningful investment.
This is our strategic task: to form a stable class of mass investors who are ready to think long-term and work with different instruments, and not just with stocks.
— How realistic is a long-term horizon for a private investor in Russia? What is needed to invest for the long term?
— This is absolutely realistic — and what’s more, it’s already starting to happen. We see that interest in long-term investing is growing. But for this to become a sustainable norm, and not an exception, several factors must come together.
First, the long-term horizon must be economically justified. And it is indeed justified: according to data for the last 10 years, the total return index of the Moscow Exchange has grown by 282%, while for deposits – by 136%. This is higher than both gold and real estate. That is, the stock market is consistently ahead of inflation and shows real growth.
Secondly, a person needs to have a financial cushion and an understanding that investing is not a way to “earn money quickly,” but a tool for preserving and increasing capital over time. And this requires knowledge and discipline.
So the key answer to your question is financial culture. If we create the tools, the access, the infrastructure – and in parallel, we raise literacy – long-term behavior becomes not only possible, but rational.
— Does financial culture really influence investor behavior? Do you have data or examples that confirm this?
— We see this from the data of our Moscow Exchange School and from our experience working with different groups of clients. For example, investors who have been trained at the Moscow Exchange School demonstrate much more stable and successful behavior: over the past 4 years, their assets have grown by 44%, while those who have not been trained have grown by only 14%. In addition, School graduates have a much higher retention rate — they stop investing after the first deal 4–5 times less often. This means that knowledge really helps to form a long-term strategy. A conscious person approaches the management of their wealth more prudently, and the effectiveness of this management is much higher.
— For many investors, managing a portfolio independently seems complicated and risky. At the beginning of the conversation, you mentioned collective investments. How do you think they influence the development of investment culture?
— Collective investments today play an important role in the formation of competent and sustainable investment behavior among private investors. Mutual investment funds, or PIFs, help retail investors competently diversify portfolios and reduce risks. Thanks to the services of professional managers, they make investments more accessible and relatively safe for those who do not have deep knowledge or are not ready to trade independently.
The growth of exchange-traded mutual investment funds (ETIFs) is particularly noticeable. They allow investing with small amounts and offer high liquidity, which makes them attractive to a wide audience. These collective investment mechanisms can play a key role in the development of the market, while helping to avoid the typical mistakes of independent investing.
In terms of trading volumes, the situation is also developing dynamically. In 2024, the share of trading in exchange-traded mutual funds reached 13% of the volume of secondary trading in shares on the Moscow Exchange, and in the first half of 2025, this figure increased to 16%. At the same time, the value of net assets of all types of mutual funds is approximately 1% of the country's GDP – this is significantly less than on the leading global markets, and we have great potential for growth.
The driver of the industry's development was, in particular, liquidity funds and the convenience of buying through brokerage platforms. Until 2015, the main barrier was the complexity of this investment process: mutual funds or brokerage accounts were opened only in bank branches in person. Accordingly, the involvement of investors was in the hundreds of thousands. As the Central Bank and the Moscow Exchange simplified access to this system, the number expanded exponentially. Over the past ten years, the number of our clients has grown from 100 thousand to 38 million people. In 2024, the volume of mutual funds increased more than threefold.
— In April 2025, Moscow Exchange initiated the launch of author funds managed by opinion leaders. What results can we talk about today?
— These funds are available on the Finuslugi platform and serve as a kind of bridge that helps attract those accustomed to classic banking products to collective investments. Today, four such funds are already operating, and the total investment volume in them has reached 200 million rubles. An important point: we are consciously forming a new class of funds, when an opinion leader, for example, a blogger, leads a particular investment strategy and his portfolio turns into a fund of proprietary trust management strategies. In this way, we have humanized the investment process, because the numbers in the accounts are one thing, and when you see the face of the person managing these numbers, it is quite another. The volume of 200 million rubles indicates that we have another successful mechanism for attracting investors — simplicity and understanding at a human level work wonders.
— You talked about mechanisms for supporting private investors and developing collective investments. What role does work with issuers play in the development of the capital market? How does the Moscow Exchange help attract new companies to the market through IPOs?
— Primary market development and attracting new companies to IPO remain key tasks for Moscow Exchange. For this purpose, we have investment elevators; Moscow Exchange has simplified the process of attracting debt and equity financing, including shares and bonds. We are constantly working to ensure that those companies that are thinking about where to get money for their development understand that one of the easiest ways is through Moscow Exchange.
Today, the IPO and pre-IPO segment has a fairly well-developed infrastructure that allows companies to raise capital on the open market. If we say that companies do not go public due to a lack of tax incentives, then this is not an entirely accurate explanation. Tax incentives are more of an additional bonus, but not the main factor.
— What is the main difficulty?
— The main difficulty is the perception of publicity by the business owners themselves. Many entrepreneurs are afraid of losing control over the company after entering the market. Among the common misconceptions is the opinion that the board of directors will limit their management capabilities, although in practice a properly formed board helps the business develop and increases its sustainability.
For small and medium-sized companies, a good start is the opportunity to raise capital through a pre-IPO – the sale of shares to a limited number of qualified investors. This allows companies to prepare for a full-fledged IPO, gain experience and support.
Our main task now is to remove information and organizational barriers. A professional community is being formed that develops a culture of corporate governance and interaction with investors.
Thus, the development of the IPO and pre-IPO segment is primarily a question of increasing awareness and trust of entrepreneurs in the public market, and not just financial or tax incentives.
— What is the entry threshold for pre-IPO?
— The company's revenue should be from 300 million rubles. But here it is more worth talking not about the entry threshold, but about how clear the business model of a specific entrepreneur is to the end investor. If the participants in the chain of bringing the company to pre-IPO understand how to package it into an investment idea, everything goes quite easily and quickly.
— Can you share any news from WEF 2025? New services, products?
— At the Eastern Economic Forum, we agreed with four regions of the Far East to issue public bonds. They are expected to be available on the Finuslugi platform as early as 2025. The idea is very simple: a region needs to build a bridge, a hospital, a school or another social infrastructure facility — and it finances this project not from the budget or from banks or large companies, but from private funds of those investors who live in this territory, walk on this bridge and attend this school. So far, our partners include the Amur and Magadan regions, the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug and the Sakha Republic (Yakutia). We hope that the process will happen quickly enough, and the first issuers will appear in September.
— To sum up, what do you think is most important today for the formation of a mature investment community in Russia?
— The formation of a mature investment community is not the result of one measure, but consistent work at all levels: from the creation of new instruments to the involvement of investors and increasing trust.
Some elements of the investment process develop faster, some slower, and they need to be constantly improved. But three things remain unshakable. The first is the trust of all participants in each other and in the system as a whole. The second is simplicity, accessibility and transparency. And the third is the constant expansion of investment opportunities for both issuers who attract funds and for those who invest, including, for example, in collective investments, copyright funds, public bonds and money market instruments. Here we can draw an analogy with a delivery service: as the range of goods expands and access to the ordering system becomes easier, you begin to use these services more and more often. The same is with the capital market. Its three pillars are trust, transparency and a wide range of investment opportunities:
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