Russian stocks decrease on rising fears of 2nd COVID-19 wave

MOSCOW, Jun 25 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market fell on Thursday following sagging oil prices and foreign markets, where investors increasingly fear a second wave of the virus, analysts said.   

The MOEX Russia Index fell 1.12% to 2,760.75, and the RTS index decreased 1.87% to 1,257.18.

"The domestic market has been reflecting the negative events of Wednesday since the first minutes of trade. Expectations of a second wave of COVID-19 have started to fulfill and investors’ hopes for a quick recovery of the world business activity were dashed," Otkritie Broker senior analyst Andrei Kochetkov said.

The U.S. stock market indices experienced their worst fall in two weeks. Alen Sabitov, analyst at investment company Freedom Finance, said that investors were worried about the growth of coronavirus contagions in many states, which can slow down economic recovery. Energy, finance and industrial companies were the outsiders, he said.

According to Sabitov, the market reacted negatively to the idea of introducing U.S. $3.1 billion of tariffs on imports of European goods. 

The Asian markets fell following a decrease of the U.S. bourses on Wednesday as the Chinese trading floors were closed for a holiday, Sabitov said. The European markets were neutral supported by the news on possible support of the non-euro zone states by the European Central Bank and progress in consideration of state support for Lufthansa.

Kochetkov said that the Brent oil blend fell to 2,775 rubles in the middle of trading session from more than 3,000 rubles on Tuesday before the market closed for a holiday.

Kochetkov said that ALROSA's shares were under pressure falling 1.85% as the company announced a halt in the activities of the Internatsionalny mine due to a virus outbreak.

Gazprom Neft was also among the outsiders diving 4.31% on dividend cutoff, he said.

Yandex rose on a secondary placement of almost $400 million shares and plans to raise $600 million more. VTB will be one of the sources of financing, the analyst said.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-1.07	205.09	13.819
Gazprom	-2.18	190.59	8.934
Lukoil	-1.57	5366.5	7.903
Norilsk Nickel	+0.21	19678	6.600
Yandex	+3.02	3460	4.067

 (68.8376– U.S. $1)

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