Oversold Russian stocks close flat as investors see no good news

MOSCOW, Jul 31 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market that profoundly decreased during the last three weeks changed little on Thursday on lack of positive drivers as Brussels announced new sanctions, albeit investors remained underwhelmed, analysts said.

The MICEX fell 0.18% to 1,379.61 and the RTS slid 0.40% to 1,219.36.

“There has been lack of ideas today in general,” Sergei Filchenkov, analyst at Metropol, said. “The accumulated effect of the 3-week market sell-off has permitted local indices to take hold of the positive territory and has protected them from a restart of falling so far. Nevertheless, the spoiled foreign background has not given hopes of a more massive increase yet,” Nord Capital analyst Vitaly Manzhos said.

The new E.U. black list of Russian companies and individuals published Thursday included air defense system producer Almaz-Antei, Russian National Commercial Bank and Dobrolyot, a low cost branch of national flag carrier Aeroflot, and eight officials. The sanctions did not meet investors’ pessimistic expectations, Sofiya Kirsanova, analyst at Raiffeisen Capital, said.

Severstal’s shares grew confidently after the company released a January–June financial report and announced special dividends of about U.S. $1 billion to be paid from the funds raised in an U.S. assets sale, Filchenkov said.

Novatek gained 0.13% to 365.50 rubles on the back of a release of strong January–June financial data, Filchenkov said.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-0.11	73.60	8.189
Gazprom	-1.05	132.00	5.473
Lukoil	-0.22	2000.90	2.113
Sberbank pref	-1.02	57.15	1.476
Severstal	+3.53	343.00	1.328

(35.7271 rubles – U.S. $1)

End