Russian stocks fall together with foreign floors on weak statistics

MOSCOW, Oct 2 (PRIME) -- Russian stocks contracted on Wednesday together with major international bourses as the world’s largest economies published weak economic statistics, fueling investor concern, analysts said.

The MOEX Russia Index fell 1.43% to 2,719.39 and the RTS decreased 1.17% to 1,313.75.

“The situation on the global stock floors worsened in the second half of the day. Flight from risky assets sped up in line with growth of concern about the health of the global economy after the largest countries of the world published weak data. This pushed the European indices down to their monthly lows, which prompted a deep fall of Russian benchmarks coupled with bearish dynamics of the oil market,” Arseny Dadashev, director of the Academy for Management of Finance and Investment, said.

Yaroslav Kabakov, director for strategies at investment company Finam, said that the U.S. Manufacturing Index turned out to be so bad that it surprised even the biggest skeptics. “Investors’ certainty that the U.S. economy will not sink into recession was shaken,” he said, adding that the Russian stock market was in the red following the majority of global indices.

“Europe’s economy has been living with a zero key rate and a negative deposit rate for a long time. But macroeconomic factors show a slowdown instead of growth. Yesterday’s U.S. manufacturing activity pointed to a significant slowdown in conditions of the trade war…Correspondingly, the markets can go only one way without economic growth and cheap money, and that way is down,” Otkritie Broker’s senior analyst Andrei Kochetkov said.

The Brent oil price fell below U.S. $59 per barrel, so shares of oil and gas companies suffered losses, Kochetkov said.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-1.32	223.50	9.527
Gazprom	-1.28	223.60	7.158
Lukoil	-2.17	5410.00	4.915
Norilsk Nickel	-0.30	16670.00	2.718
NLMK	-2.92	136.50	1.584

(65.0670 rubles – U.S. $1)

End