Russian stocks fall on uncertainty of US presidential elections

MOSCOW, Nov 7 (PRIME) -- Russian stocks contracted on Monday due to uncertainty surrounding the U.S. presidential elections as investors did noå price in the improvement of external background during the day, analysts said.

The MICEX fell 0.51% to 1,952.69 and the RTS decreased 0.71% to 963.97.

“The beginning of the week was calm for the Russian stock market. The MICEX index eased on Monday ignoring the favorable external background, as the European retail sales data turned out to be better than expected. The U.S. labor market statistics was also positive on Friday (November 4), which increases chances of a tougher monetary policy this year,” Yegor Dakhtler, an analyst at investment company Veles Capital, said.

Andrei Dirgin, head of the research department at Alfa-Forex, said that the market will be highly volatile until the results of the U.S. presidential polls are announced.

“The development of the situation around Hillary Clinton and the FBI was in the limelight today, as on the weekend the authority dropped its claims against the presidential candidate from the Democratic Party. The result was swift, and today different opinion polls showed Clinton’s leadership by two to five percentage points on average. Still, it is too early to write Donald Trump off,” Dirgin said.

Vitaly Manzhos, a senior analyst at Bank Obrazovanie, said that the local market withdrew itself from the world market turbulence on November 4 due to a holiday, and shrugged off Monday’s correctional growth on the world floors. Russian and foreign investors also have “another valid reason to delay purchases, as preliminary results of the U.S. presidential elections will be known only on Wednesday,” he said.

Grocery chain Magnit plunged 5.98% to 9,740 rubles on media reports that a board member is selling a 1.3% stake for 11.4 billion rubles, which is a more than an 8% discount to the current price, Manzhos said.

Airline Transaero plummeted 15.11% to 4.83 rubles in correction after a November 2 surge on the news that the board of directors will discuss a program to resume the company’s core activity. The possibility of that happening is very low, Manzhos said.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	+0.46	143.40	4.666
Magnit	-5.98	9740.00	3.823
Gazprom	-1.00	138.50	3.284
Lukoil	+0.23	2991.00	2.063
Moscow Exchange	-4.12	110.17	1.908

(63.5043 rubles – U.S. $1)

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