Ruble at all-time lows, falling oil drag Russian stocks down

MOSCOW, Jan 20 (PRIME) -- Russian stocks decreased on Wednesday amid falling ruble and oil prices, which are depressed by a slowing economic growth in China and expectations that global oil glut will widen, analysts said.

The MICEX fell 0.92% to 1,630.39 and the RTS decreased 4.83% to 628.41.

“This is all the fault of oil, which weakened to below U.S. $28 per barrel of Brent,” Andrei Kochetkov, an analyst at Otkritie Broker, said.

“Moreover, yesterday’s statistics from China was weaker than expected (the GDP for the fourth quarter of 2015 amounted to 6.8% and retail sales were also disappointing),” Sofya Kirsanova, an analyst at Raiffeisen Capital said.

A recent report of the International Energy Agency (IEA) was an additional negative factor for the Russian trading floors, because the agency expects that oil supply will grow on Iranian exports, the analyst said.

The fall of the dollar-denominated RTS was technically sped up by the ruble fall. The national currency depreciated to its new all-time low of 81.94 against the U.S. dollar by the closing bell.

The ruble weakening particularly depressed banks and developers, Kirsanova said. The latter were also put under pressure by the news that Russian authorities have no plans to prolong a state program of preferential mortgage lending after March 2016, and weak operating results for October–December 2015 and 2015 on the whole, she said.

Top Russian lender Sberbank fell 3.29% to 83.83 rubles, and Bank Saint Petersburg decreased 2.27% to 40.95 rubles. Real estate developer LSR Group went down 2.85% to 597.5 rubles.

Pharmacy Chain 36.6 fell 10.39% in correction after Tuesday’s growth on the news that it will merge with Pharmacy Chain A5, Bogdan Zvarich, an analyst at investment holding Finam, said.

Russian silver and gold producer Polymetal International, which received a 15.3% interest in a joint venture with Polyus Gold, developing a Yakutia gold field, rose 2.64% to 602.5 rubles, and Polyus Gold grew 3% to 3,075 rubles.

Some stocks of non-oil exporters were investors’ safe havens amid the ruble and oil weakening. Fertilizer producer Acron increased 2.85% to 3,723 rubles and metals maker Norilsk Nickel added 1.28% to 8,649 rubles.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-3.29	83.83	11.248
Gazprom	-1.12	125.83	4.394
Norilsk Nickel	+1.28	8649.00	3.407
Lukoil	-0.22	2145.30	3.396
Magnit	-0.74	10350.00	2.600

(78.4862 rubles – U.S. $1)

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