At the end of last year, the collapsing ruble made headlines. This year, the soaring ruble is just going up quietly. The factors driving it up are largely the same that drove it down.
In the fall of 2014, this paper argued that collapsing oil prices and heightened geopolitical factors scared international investors out of the Russian stock market and with it out of holding the Russian ruble.
The Benchmark Russian equity index RTS dropped 55 percent from June to December and with it the ruble. It lost 45 percent of its value against the dollar over the same timeframe.
Russian ruble versus the U.S. dollar over the last year Google Finance
