Oil price rise, Fed’s minutes push Russian stocks higher

MOSCOW, Jul 7 (PRIME) – A rising oil price and minutes of a recent meeting of the U.S. Federal Reserve System (Fed) provided Russian stocks with momentum to close in the green zone on Thursday, analysts said.

The MICEX rose 0.16% to 1,882.41 and the RTS increased 0.67% to 923.85.

The Brent oil price rose 0.692% to U.S. $49.14 per barrel as of 5.56 p.m. Moscow time, according to the ICE exchange.

“The absence of news from the U.K. sidelined the Brexit theme and returned risk appetite to the markets. The Russian market grew today under the influence of higher oil prices. The Brent oil price managed to keep above a $49 per barrel level during the day,” Irina Rogova, an analyst at Forex Club group of companies, said.

The soft tone of the Fed’s minutes also supported demand for risky assets, Igor Kalyazin, an analyst at Otkritie Broker, said.

“The minutes…did not clarify the possibility of an upcoming increase of rates, as uncertainty after the U.K. referendum remains and the disastrous data on the labor market for the past month is very likely to be a one-time event. The pause in the key rate increase was also favored by Daniel Tarullo, who said that the interest rate hike should be delayed until inflation slows down to 2%,” Kalyazin said.

Vitaly Manzhos, a senior analyst at Bank Obrazovanie, said that the positive impact of all the news was priced in by the middle of the day, and the mid-term technical analysis of the MICEX index remains neutral.

Shares of top lender Sberbank grew 1.89% to 131.80 rubles due to strong financial results. The bank’s net profit almost tripled to 229.4 billion rubles in January–June, as calculated under Russian Accounting Standards (RAS), Igor Kovalyov, an analyst at InstaForex group of companies, said.

The E.U. launch of an anti-dumping investigation of Russian hot-rolled steel exports undermined Russian steelmakers. Severstal and Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK) lost 3.55% to 676.10 rubles and 3.55% to 81.15 rubles, respectively, Kovalyov said.

Mobile operators MTS and MegaFon lost 1.57% to 231.50 rubles and 0.85% to 702 rubles, while common and preferred shares of telecom giant Rostelecom fell 3.83% to 88.49 rubles and 6.21% to 68 rubles, respectively after president Vladimir Putin signed into law bills obliging communications and Internet companies to store users content creating a long-term negative factor for the whole sector, Manzhos said.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	+1.89	131.80	10.222
Gazprom	+0.27	140.37	3.289
Surgutneftegas prefs	-0.90	39.49	1.948
Lukoil	+0.59	2748.00	1.636
Norilsk Nickel	-0.59	8720.00	1.354

(64.6304 rubles – U.S. $1)

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