Russian stocks fall on Chinese market woes, oil price slump

MOSCOW, Nov 23 (PRIME) – The Russian stocks contracted on Friday triggered by sales on the Chinese market and exacerbated by annual lows of oil prices, analysts said.

The MOEX Russia Index fell 1.12% to 2,342.97 and the RTS decreased 2.18% to 1,113.52.

Investment company Freedom Finance analyst Anastasia Sosnova said that China’s CSI 300 index plummeted by more than 2% on worries that the U.S. will push forward with their campaign against Huawei Technologies. “Investor attention was again focused settlement of the U.S.–China trade dispute prior to a meeting of leaders of the two states,” she said.

Andrei Kochetkov, Otkritie Broker’s senior analyst, said that the Chinese market fell by almost 2.5%, becoming the reason for the Russian indices contraction.

“Besides, the oil price hit its lowest this autumn, and refused to show any signals of an upward rebound so far,” he said.

Alexander Razuvayev, head of investment company Alpari’s research department, said that the U.S. acts as the major “bear” player of the oil market. Shale oil producers raised their output by 1.7 million barrels a day from September through November, and estimates of daily supply surplus on the global oil market range from 500,000 barrels to 1.5 million barrels, while it is yet unclear whether OPEC and non-OPEC countries are ready to cut their output.

“We are sure that we will see oil prices falling to about $50 in the two coming months,” Razuvayev said.

Kochetkov also said that there were almost no corporate news released during the day, and the market still priced in past ideas. National flagship carrier Aeroflot gained 3.49% on prospects of contraction in fuel prices, he said.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-1.05	197.30	10.030
Lukoil	-2.98	4670.00	5.598
Rosneft	-1.44	405.20	3.049
Gazprom	-1.38	151.79	2.904
Norilsk Nickel	+0.66	11954.00	1.546

(65.6067 rubles – U.S. $1)

End