Russian stocks fall on US political woes, terrorist attacks in EU

MOSCOW, Aug 18 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market decreased on Friday, as well as all key markets across the globe, sliding on investors’ concerns about U.S. political troubles and several violent attacks following Barcelona’s van massacre, analysts said.  

The MICEX fell 0.56% to 1,930.71 and the RTS decreased 0.60% to 1,027.85.

“The markets continued their downward movement, reacting this way to the U.S. political difficulties and new terrorist attacks in Europe,” Anastasia Sosnova, senior analyst at Bank Rossiysky Capital, said.

Finam expert Vasily Oleinik said that rumors about alleged plans by Director of the U.S. National Economic Council Gary Cohn to resign made investors flee the U.S. assets because Cohn is the key advocate of the tax reform. The expectations that it will take place have propelled the U.S. market growth so far in 2017. Shares can lose 20–30% of their price if the reform remains unfulfilled.

The split between the U.S. Democrats and Conservatives and a rising dissatisfaction with policies by the president make it very troublesome to agree on anything, Oleinik said.

He said that Asian markets decreased to a lesser extent than the U.S. ones. European markets moods also deteriorated.

On the Friday evening, the Spanish police killed five suspects of preparing another terrorist attack in the city of Cambrils, south of Barcelona, after a truck driven by terrorists killed 13 people in Barcelona. Several people were stabbed during a separate attack in Finland’s Turku. 

Otkritie Broker analyst Andrei Kochetkov said that the trading volume was low as the vacation season in Russia is underway.

Oleinik said that Sistema soared 8.11% on expectations of a court decision on a lawsuit by oil major Rosneft.

Mosenergo increased 2.13% on an idea that Moscow authorities’ housing reconstruction project will benefit the company.

Kochetkov said that Akron rose 1.34% on a decision by the board of directors to pay 235 rubles per share in dividends from the undistributed net profit for previous years.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Otkritie FC Bank	-4.15	1500	16.061
Sberbank	-1.86	169.5	8.890
Gazprom	-0.19	116	2.583
Norilsk Nickel	+1.49	8899	2.310
Lukoil	-0.42	2829	1.341

 (59.2490 rubles – U.S. $1)

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