Russian stocks dive hit by falling oil prices, ruble

MOSCOW, Mar 9 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market slumped on Thursday in the wake of a dramatic slide in oil prices and pressured by a falling ruble, analysts said.

The MICEX fell by 2.50% to 1,974.24 and the RTS dropped by 4.61% to 1,046.90.

“Oil remains the core risk factor for the Russian stocks and the ruble. Growth in the U.S. crude inventories and production has changed the mood of the market participants and resulted in an impressive break down out of a lengthy narrow consolidation band,” Otkritie Broker analyst Andrei Kochetkov said.

“The ruble and oil have been trading in a limited range for a long time, but this could not last forever,” the expert said. “The market had accumulated a significant excess of long positions… this is why oil “bears” took their spring profits (following the newly issued statistic report).”

The Brent oil price slid by 5% from $56 to almost $53 per barrel.

Roman Blinov, an analyst at GLOBAL FX, expects decline on Russia’s stock and currency exchanges to continue.

Kochetkov also said that investors keep liquidating consequences of a rally following election of U.S. President Donald Trump, because they see no progress in relations between Russia and the U.S. All the market’s hopes since the beginning of November seem to have proved groundless.

Power producers and distributors Federal Grid Company of Unified Energy Systems (FGC UES), Russian Grids, or Rosseti and Territorial Generating Company-1 were among the biggest losers, decreasing 17.34% to 0.164 rubles, 13.38% to 0.833 rubles and 8.5% to 0.014 rubles, respectively.

Most blue chips fell, too. Gazprom lost 2.93% to 129 rubles, Lukoil dropped by 3.26% to 2,970 rubles, Novatek went down by 4.17% to 715 rubles. Metal companies, on the contrary, outperformed the market due to a weakening ruble: Polymetal rose 2.8% to 661 rubles and Severstal surged by 1.35% to 809 rubles.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-2.97%	156.20	10.053
Gazprom	-2.93%	129.00	6.947
FGC UES	-17.34%	0.16	4.511
Lukoil	-3.26%	2,970	3.660
VTB Bank	-2.12%	0.06	3.231

(58.2630 rubles – U.S. $1)

End