Low oil price, falling global stocks depress Russian market

MOSCOW, Aug 2 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market decreased on Tuesday on the back of low oil prices and falling global stocks, analysts said.

The MICEX fell 1.78% to 1,912.69 and the RTS decreased 2.11% to 903.04.

“Market pessimism was caused by oil prices again, because they are 20% lower than this year’s highs, although they’ve rebounded a bit,” Otkritie Broker analyst Andrei Kochetkov said.

InstaForex analyst Igor Kovalyov said that the Russian indices were depressed by oil prices falling to below U.S. $42 of Brent for a moment, as well as by lower European stocks.

Veles Capital analyst Vasily Tanurkov said that the Russian stock market was put under pressure by depreciation of most global stocks after the Japanese government adopted a new stimulus program.

Investors were disappointed by the news that a significant part of additional financing promised by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be provided by the government and state-run companies in the form of loans, Tanurkov said.

Vitaly Manzhos, a senior analyst at Bank Obrazovanie, said that power grid company Lenenergo rose 2.06% to 4,220 rubles per common share and jumped 21.12% to 33.55 per preferred share after it said that it had received a 3.07 billion ruble net profit in January-June after a 5.09 billion ruble net loss for the same period of 2015.

Kovalyov said that independent gas producer Novatek fell 2.11% to 641 rubles on the news that the company’s gas output went down 6.1% on the year in July.

Kochetkov said that oil companies were under particular pressure, while shares of some non-oil exporters rose. Oil major Lukoil fell 3.64% to 2,781 rubles, another oil giant Rosneft went down 2.53% to 317.35 rubles, Chelyabinsk Pipe-Rolling Plant (ChelPipe) rose 2.96% to 73.1 rubles and precious metals producer Polymetal increased 0.62% to 981.5 rubles.

Enel Russia, whose net profit under Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) fell 42% on the year in January–June, decreased 0.35% to 0.857 rubles.

Below are the MICEX’ five most active stocks on Tuesday:

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-2.50	135.06	7.808
Gazprom	-1.77	134.50	3.521
Lukoil	-3.64	2781.00	2.296
Surgutneftegas pref	-2.52	31.195	1.984
Norilsk Nickel	-0.58	9581.00	1.871

(65.9553 rubles – U.S. $1)

End