Russian stocks decrease as Germany pledges new sanctions

MOSCOW, Sep 3 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market decreased on Thursday after Germany promised to consider new sanctions against Moscow, analysts said.

The MOEX Russia Index fell 0.83% to 2,931.92, and the RTS Index decreased 0.94% to 1,223.21.

"The dynamics of the Russian stock market was positive for most of the day. The MOEX Russia Index was aiming at consolidation above a psychologically important threshold of 3,000 on the back of a confident rise on the European stock markets and the same dynamics of the futures for the U.S. stock market indices," Mikhail Shulgin, head of the department of global research at Otkritie Broker, said.

"But optimism on the Russian market disappeared after the German government said that the tests showed unambiguously that the leader of Russian opposition Alexei Navalny was poisoned with nerve agent Novichok. Germany will pursue coordinated reaction towards the Kremlin in the context of the incident and demands that the Russian government explain what happened fast." 

He said that the market reaction seems overly emotional because the German authorities are speaking about diplomatic, not economic sanctions. Besides, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Russia's Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline project must not be involved in the case. The analyst said that the market participants assumed the worst-case scenario.

Senior analyst at Promsvyazbank Bogdan Zvarich said that beside the geopolitical risks, the Russian market was pressured by falling oil prices.

He said that the European and U.S. markets grew and improvement of the external background can draw buyers to the Russian market in the next few trading sessions.    

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-1.63	218.95	14.497
Yandex	-1.53	4992.4	11.253
Gazprom	-1.07	180.01	10.998
Lukoil	-0.31	4837	7.033
Polyus	-3.27	16957	5.322

(73.8588 – U.S. $1)

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