Saqib Ahmed Iqbal

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The battered shares of Van Eck’s Russia ETF are attracting a surge of interest from traders and drawing comparisons to last year’s frenzy in so-called meme stocks.

Designed to track the performance of the MVIS Russia Index, the ETF has tumbled 65% over the last two weeks as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Western sanctions stir massive gyrations in assets linked to the country.

Analysts said that the sharp fall has accelerated trading in ETF options and shares, a lot of which was driven by retail investors.

With the ETF’s price swinging wildly — it fell as much as 15% before recovering to trade up as high as 6% on the day — trading volume in the ETF shares jumped to 27 million by 2:30 p.m. (1930 GMT), or about twice the average daily amount, according to Trade Alert data.

Optional ETFs were busier than expected, with 211,000 contracts trading, which is four times as many.

Garrett DeSimone is the head quant at OptionMetrics. He said that some volume was spurred by traders looking to make a profit off the stock’s extreme volatility.

He stated that VanEck Russia ETF behaves similarly to a “meme stock” because of its volatility.

DeSimone stated that “It seems as though retail definitely had its fingerprints on RSX Options trades today.”

Based on the number of options traded, the sentiment was mixed. Some traders were betting on a rapid rebound, while others were hoping to see a continuation slump.

The third consecutive day of Russian market closures made it difficult to accurately value the ETF. Analysts said that the ETF’s trading price strayed far from its net assets value (NAV). This is the value of every share of an ETF determined by its proportion of its underlying assets.

VanEck data shows that the ETF’s share price ended Monday at a 178% premium over its NAV. Todd Rosenbluth from CFRA Research, Head of ETF and Mutual Fund Research said that this makes trading in shares more risky.