Russia’s Stock Market to Remain Closed Friday

There will be no stock trading on the Moscow Exchange on Friday, as the closure of Russia’s stock market reaches the two-week mark.

In a notice posted on its website late Thursday evening, the Russian Central Bank said there would be no stock trading on the exchange the next day. The Moscow Exchange’s currency market will be open.

Stock trading on the Moscow Exchange has been shut since Feb. 25—the day after Russian forces invaded Ukraine—although the exchange’s currency market has reopened.

The market’s closure has effectively frozen trading in the shares of Russia’s largest companies. Following the imposition of tough Western sanctions on Moscow, the price of London-listed global depository receipts of companies such as Sberbank plunged into the pennies, before trading in the companies’ GDRs was suspended by the London Stock Exchange.