Russia stocks decline on Brent price fall, forecast of weak price

MOSCOW, Mar 27 (PRIME) -- Russian stocks fell on Friday due to the Brent weakening and depressed by the forecast of Finance Minister Anton Siluanov that the oil price is unlikely to rebound to at least U.S. $70 per barrel any time soon, analysts said.

The MICEX fell 0.65% to 1,571.55 and the RTS decreased 1.40% to 856.44.

Andrei Dirgin, head of the analytical department of Alfa-Forex, said that weakening of the oil price to below U.S. $58 coupled with Siluanov’s comments that oil market forecasts say the price is unlikely to overshoot $70 per barrel in the next few years.

The slump of the dollar-denominated RTS was also increased by the ruble weakening, which fell as the mineral extraction tax payments finished and oil weakened.

“From the point of view of fundamental trends the Russian stock market seems strongly oversold,” Alexander Kostyukov, analyst at Veles Capital, said.

Mechel fell 8.29% to 60.11 rubles on a report that exports of power coal to China fell by 40% in January–February, Kostyukov said.

Raspadskaya fell 4.29% to 37.96 rubles after the company published a net loss worth $305.8 million for 2014, which grew more than twofold on the year, Anton Fomin, analyst at InstaForex, said.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-2.94	61.00	9.769
Gazprom	+2.03	134.88	4.345
Norilsk Nickel	-3.93	9905.00	2.367
Lukoil	-1.75	2577.00	1.846
Magnit	-0.92	11038.00	1.063

(56.4271 rubles – U.S. $1)

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