Russian stocks decrease on negative foreign markets

MOSCOW, Sep 9 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market declined on Thursday due to a negative trend on foreign markets, analysts said.

The MOEX Russia Index fell 0.59% to 3,993.56, and the RTS Index decreased 0.01% to 1,726.37.

"We can say that the background affected (the Russian market) mostly negatively. Asian indices fell, the European ones were also in the red zone on expectations of statements of the European Central Bank about the support measures reduction," Andrei Kochetkov, leading analyst for global research at Otkritie Broker, said.

He said that the MOEX Russia Index started the day in the negative zone, sinking to 3,982.60, which is lower than the minimum for Wednesday, but recovered to 4,000 in the middle of the session.

Dmitry Postolenko, senior portfolio manager of Sber Asset Management, said that analysts of U.S. investment banks forecast a decline on the stock market on the back of lower U.S. economy growth expectations.

He added that Russian investors expect that the central bank would raise the key rate on Friday because inflation amounted to 6.7% in August against a 6.6% forecast.

According to Kochetkov, RUSAL was an outsider of the session in spite of an aluminum price increase.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Gazprom	-0.18	327	11.877
Sberbank	-1.25	327.55	9.133
RUSAL	-1.95	68.34	5.902
Lukoil	-0.28	6324	4.894
Novatek	-1.07	1.903.4	4.110

(73.4421 – U.S. $1)

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