Russian stocks drop on weak oil, ruble, falling global floors

MOSCOW, Feb 11 (PRIME) -- Russian stocks decreased on Thursday on the back of low oil prices, a weak ruble and falling global trading floors, which were put under pressure by the news that the U.S. still plans tightening of its monetary policy, analysts said.

The MICEX fell 1.11% to 1,711.58 and the RTS decreased 3.63% to 671.34.

“Today the Russian stock market decreased because oil prices weakened again,” Bogdan Zvarich, an analyst at Finam, said.

Oil prices were put under pressure by a speech of Janet Yellen, the head of the Federal Reserve System, analysts of Saint-Petersburg Exchange (SPB) said in a research note. Yellen said on Wednesday that the authority still plans increasing the key rate gradually despite economic difficulties and high volatility on financial markets. The news lead to a fall of global stock markets, after that commodity markets, particularly the oil market, also started falling, the analysts said.

The national currency also followed dynamics of oil quotations, Vladimir Yevstifeyev, an analyst at Bank Zenit, said.

The fall of the dollar-denominated RTS was technically sped up by the ruble weakening against the U.S. dollar to about 80.5 by the closing bell.

The ruble weakening caused sale-offs in segments focused on the domestic market, including banks and telecommunications companies, Sofya Kirsanova, an analyst at Raiffeisen Capital, said. In particular, mobile operator MegaFon went down 3.74% to 824 rubles.

Non-oil exporters benefited from the ruble depreciation, Vasily Tanurkov, an analyst at Veles Capital, said. Precious metals producer Polymetal surged 4.63% to 712.5 rubles, steel exporter Severstal rose 2.41% to 663.9 rubles, Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK) grew 1.83% to 72.30 rubles and diamond producer ALROSA rose 2.73% to 64 rubles.

Meat producer Cherkizovo Group added 0.5% to 1,015 rubles on statements that Russia’s agriculture needs more support, Kirsanova said. Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachyov said that the agricultural sector needs an additional 270 billion ruble state funding for full export substitution in production of meat, milk and vegetables by 2020.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-2.23	94.20	10.880
Gazprom	-1.91	130.49	5.762
Lukoil	+0.40	2392.00	3.125
Norilsk Nickel	-1.57	8376.00	2.703
Magnit	+0.72	10143.00	2.566

(79.0689 rubles – U.S. $1)

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