Russian stocks fall after China threatens taxi appplications

MOSCOW, Jul 27 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market closed lower in spite of growing oil prices on Tuesday, because of a slump on the Asian markets after China created problems for the national taxi applications, analysts said.

The MOEX Russia Index fell 0.45% to 3,733.10, and the RTS Index decreased 0.49% to 1,594.64.

"We must not worry too much and expect a domino fall of all financial markets after China just yet. But globalization of the financial markets led to large U.S. investment in China, and volatility on the markets will certainly increase," Artyom Tuzov, executive director of the capital market department at investment company Univer Capital, said.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell for a third session in a row by 2–4% a day, he added that after China pressured taxi apps DIDI, TAL and BABA, the Asian markets started plummeting.

Alexander Osin, head of Freedom Finance’s department for trade operations on the Russian stock market, said that there were proactive sales on the Chinese market with the Shanghai Exchange index losing 2.5% as the government could increase pressure on the growing segments. For instance, the State Council earlier restricted financing of private education.

He said that the U.S. markets remained uncertain about expansion of the debt plan. The future of U.S. $1.2 trillion infrastructure support promoted by the Democrats and the presidential administration was also to be seen, as the Republicans opposed the bill and it did not pass the Congress.

Inter RAO decreased 0.98%, according to Osin, on a fall of January–June net profit to 7.8 billion rubles.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-1.27	299.5	11.136
Gazprom	-1.05	278.1	7.442
Norilsk Nickel	+1.07	25450	7.139
NLMK	+2.88	256	4.267
Lukoil	-1.17	6330	3.993

(74.0980 – U.S. $1)

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