Russian stocks close mixed on ruble, Brent fall, geopolitics

MOSCOW, Jan 13 (PRIME) -- The Russian stocks closed mixed on Tuesday on the continuing weakening of the ruble, a low Brent price, expectations that Standard & Poor’s (S&P) will downgrade the country to a junk grade and geopolitical risks, experts said.

The MICEX rose 1.31% to 1,533.09 and RTS decreased 2.48%% to 737.88.

“The ruble, which fell to 64.84 rubles per U.S. dollar, the Brent price below $45 as well as expectations that Russia’s rating will be downgraded by S&P are the main depressing factors for the Russian stocks, Yevgeny Loktyukhov, analyst at Promsvyazbank,” said.

The abandonment of negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France on the Ukrainian conflict scheduled for January 15 was not welcomed by investors which connected it with additional geopolitical risks for the country, the expert said.

Exporters, particularly metals companies, rose on the ruble weakening, while the financial and banking sector fell on the devaluation, Andrei Rozhkov, senior analyst at Metropol, said.

Magnit retailer rose 4.59% to 11,180 rubles after it published strong financial results.

Growing metals companies included NLMK, which rose 3.40% to 72.505 rubles, MMK, which increased 4.09% to 12.38 rubles and Severstal, which rose 4.40% to 583.0 rubles.

Preference shares of oil company Transneft followed a bullish trend and rose 2.35% to 130,990 rubles.

Sberbank fell 4.12% to 60.31 rubles and VTB Bank decreased 4.77% to 0.05952 rubles on devaluation.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-4.12	60.31	10.097
Gazprom	+1.73	142.64	6.198
Lukoil	+1.82	2522.00	2.551
Norilsk Nickel	+1.89	10025.00	1.298
Magnit	+4.59	11180.00	1.286

(62.7363 rubles – U.S. $1)

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