MOSCOW (AFP) -- Western investors expressed alarm about the future of economic reform in Russia after liberal forces were ousted from the parliament and nationalists made a surprisingly strong showing.

Have a stress-free online holiday spree, plus gifts off the beaten path and insider shopping secrets.

The financial markets showed little enthusiasm about Sunday's parliamentary poll, which handed a crushing victory to President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party and its nationalist allies, the LDPR and Motherland.

The benchmark RTS stock market index ended the day up 0.96 percent.

Although there was some relief that United Russia might gain a simple majority in the 450-member Duma -- allowing it to pass legislation without outside support --, many analysts predicted a slowdown in reform in a new parliament with nationalist leanings.

"The combination of the liberals' failure and the success of Motherland points to a Duma, which will add little value as far as structural reform, is concerned," the United Financial Group brokerage said in a research note.

"The largely passive United Russia majority will vote for measures backed by the Kremlin and government, with no liberals to push and enhance that agenda inside the parliament, and the Motherland contingent having the opposite effect," UFG added.

Putin included several free-market politicians in his government team, including Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, Trade and Economic Development Minister German Gref, and the chief Kremlin economic adviser Andrei Illarionov.

But most of them maintained close links with the SPS leadership, drawn from a group of reformers who engineered the post-Soviet restructuring of the economy under Putin's predecessor Boris Yeltsin.

Economists say that despite slashing and simplifying taxes and the authorization of a limited sale of agricultural land, reform of the inefficient banking sector and the bloated energy monopolies remain unfinished business.

Putin has set the ambitious goal of doubling Russia's economy in the next decade.

Motherland, whose co-leader is the left-leaning economist Sergei Glazyev, campaigned on an anti-big business ticket, capitalizing on public support for the arrest of Russia's richest man Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Steven Dashevsky, head of research at the Aton brokerage, said the silver lining in the cloud was the stable majority for United Russia but this was outweighed by the pressures likely to be faced by business. But the analyst added that the "key market implication is that big business is likely to see its tax burden increased, property rights challenged and the overall operating environment turn more hostile."