Russian stocks flat on blue chips rise, oil price plunge

MOSCOW, Jun 7 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market closed with marginal changes on Wednesday after growing for most of the day to positive dynamics of foreign markets and local blue chips and falling in the afternoon on the back of an oil price dive, analysts said.

The MICEX fell 0.09% to 1,868.42 and the RTS decreased 0.66% to 1,034.31.

“The influence of the external background on the Russian market can be seen as positive: futures for the broad American index S&P 500 are demonstrating an up to 0.1% growth and the general European Stoxx 600 is adding 0.43%,” Finam analyst Timur Nigmatullin said.

Andrei Kochetkov, an analyst at Otkritie Broker, said that the fact that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) raised Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast for 2017 to 1.4% from 0.8% and for 2018 to 1.6% from 1% was also positive for Russian stocks.

Russian corporate reports contributed to the overall market growth on Wednesday, he said.

Sberbank increased after publishing a net profit rising by 42.1% to 261.8 billion rubles in January–May under Russian Accounting Standards (RAS), Kochetkov said.

Rosneft went up after presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia has no plans to buy back a stake in the company from the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the analyst said.

Gazprom can benefit from the blockade of Qatar because the company is an exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), he said.

Brent decreased below U.S. $49 per barrel, which, according to Anastasia Sosnova, a leading analyst at Bank Rossiysky Capital, pressurized Russian assets.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	+0.01	152.82	6.710
Gazprom	-0.11	118.92	3.346
Rosneft	+1.8	308	2.056
Moscow Exchange	+1.9	103.89	1.532
Lukoil	-0.61	2705	1.444

(56.6747 rubles – U.S. $1)

End