Russian stocks close little changed after morning slump

MOSCOW, Dec 14 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market closed nearly flat on opening on Tuesday after a slump in assets could not recover after a large decrease during the morning session, not provoked by any external factors, analysts said. 

The MOEX Russia Index grew 0.03% to 3,619.39, and the RTS Index increased 0.05% to 1,548.81.

"The morning hysteria at the opening of the Russian market … fizzled a bit at lunch, but the market has not recovered the losses as a result of sales by international and local players of the financial market," Roman Blinov, senior analyst at Russ Invest, said.

Mikhail Shulgin, head of the global research department of Otktitie Investments, said that the morning decline was emotional and not caused by the external background. One of the reasons was the low liquidity of morning trade that was introduced only recently and has not gained popularity. But the U.S. stocks futures rose as well as the oil prices. 

He added that the news about the E.U. plans to stop signing long-term gas contracts that run until 2049 was no news because the union wants to shift to carbon neutrality from 2050.

According to Blinov, the market had no ideas to trigger growth due to the threats of Western sanctions, an upcoming release of U.S. statistics and a meeting of the Federal Reserve System (Fed).

Below are the MOEX Russia Index’ five most active stocks on Tuesday:

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Gazprom	+3.24	317.22	49.997
Sberbank	+0.51	282.08	46.378
Lukoil	+3.43	6594.5	12.826
Norilsk Nickel	+0.25	20902	12.791
VTB	+2.47	0.04399	6.274

(73.4107 – U.S. $1)    

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