Russian stocks fall on profit taking before Victory Day holiday

MOSCOW, Fri (PRIME) -- Russian stocks fell on profit taking before long holidays and on the back of falling global stock markets, analysts said.

The MICEX fell 0.26% to 1,901.56 and the RTS decreased 0.49% to 912.02.

“The Russian stock market continued its decline today, ahead of long holidays and due to a correction on Western markets after the U.S. released official labor statistics, and also due to uncertainty about the amount of Gazprom’s dividends,” Yevgeny Loktyukhov, an analyst at Promsvyazbank, said. Russia celebrates the Victory Day on May 9 and markets will be closed.

The Chinese stock market fell before the publishing of foreign reserves data due to investor fears of renewed yuan depreciation and it put Russian stocks under additional pressure, Veles Capital’s analyst Vasily Tanurkov said.

The Moscow Exchange fell 2.17% to 103.93 rubles after rising on Thursday. Yesterday the shares were supported by the news that the volume of trading on the bourse rose 24.1% on the year to 68.6 trillion rubles in April, Vitaly Manzhos, a senior analyst at Bank Obrazovanie, said.

Andrei Dirgin, head of Alfa-Forex analytical department, said if Canadian wildfire is suppressed by May 10 and there is some de-escalation of a military conflict in Libya, oil prices will be put under pressure that will also depress the Russian market.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-0.23	120.64	8.411
Gazprom	-0.77	159.27	4.197
Lukoil	-0.04	2629.00	2.783
Norilsk Nickel	-0.56	8760.00	2.183
Rosneft	-2.23	329.00	1.706

(65.8918 rubles – U.S. $1)

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