Russian stocks fall in thin trade on lower oil price, no drivers

MOSCOW, Jul 22 (PRIME) -- Russian stocks decreased in thin trade on Friday because of falling prices for oil, the back bone of the country’s economy, analysts said.

The MICEX fell 0.04% to 1,926.90 and the RTS decreased 1.17% to 935.98.

Investors were also wary in the absence of significant news and ahead of the weekend, Andrei Dirgin, head of the analytical department at Alfa-Forex, said.

“Market players were also worried by oil price fluctuations. The Brent price fell below a psychologically important level of U.S. $46 per barrel,” the analyst said.

The ruble weakening to about 64.9 against the dollar sped up the fall of the dollar-denominated RTS.

Veles Capital’s analyst Alexander Kostyukov said that trade volumes were below average and electric power companies were among the growth leaders again.

Russian Grids jumped 5.78% to 0.7426 rubles, Federal Grid Company of Unified Energy Systems (FGC UES) rose 3.14% to 0.154 rubles and Territorial Generating Company-2 (TGC-2) surged 7.69% to 0.00175 rubles.

Otkritie Broker’s analyst Andrei Kochetkov said that oil company Bashneft rose 2.16% to 2,790 rubles on the news that VTB Capital, investment unit of country’s second-largest bank VTB, invited a wide range of investors to take part in privatization of the company.

Vitaly Manzhos, a senior analyst at Bank Obrazovanie, said that coal company Raspadskaya fell 1.76% to 29.1 rubles on weak operating results for January–June.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-0.51	137.80	4.646
Gazprom	+0.36	140.60	2.054
Surgutneftegas pref	+0.07	33.50	1.411
Norilsk Nickel	+0.11	9400.00	1.360
ALROSA	+0.01	70.01	1.208

(63.7373 rubles – U.S. $1)

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