(Bloomberg) -- Russia is keeping its stock market shut in an effort to protect domestic investors from the impact of harsh sanctions, while currency trading is set to resume.

The Moscow Exchange equity market will stay closed on Wednesday, the Bank of Russia said in a statement. The trading halt, which began on Feb. 28, is the longest in the country’s modern history. Foreign-exchange trading, meantime, is set to reopen on Wednesday after a shorter closure.

Before the shutdown, the IMOEX benchmark index saw its worst weekly slump on record. While the trading halt helped to limit the damage for local stocks, Russian equities listed in London lost more than 90% of their value before getting suspended as international sanctions hit everything from the country’s ability to access foreign reserves to the SWIFT bank-messaging system. 

European companies with business exposure to the country have lost more than $100 billion in market value, while global index providers announced plans to remove Russian shares from their benchmarks. Although some investors have now deemed the nation “uninvestable,” Russia has promised to prop up its equity market with up to $10 billion when it reopens.

The plunge in foreign-listed shares of Russian companies is also an indicator of how local equity investors might react when Moscow trading resumes, with some strategists saying the index is likely to fall another 40% to 50% before any bounce from state intervention.

Ruble trading is also a global affair. The currency is both traded round-the-clock in the interbank market and on the Moscow Exchange. 

Normally interbank prices around the world reflect prices in Moscow trading, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused the markets to diverge. The ruble lost a third of its value in offshore trading at one point on Feb. 28, its biggest-ever slump, and the drop for the offshore price by early evening that day was six percentage points more than the Moscow price. 

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