Russian stocks may ease on expectations from ECB, nervous market

MOSCOW, Sep 9 (PRIME) -- Russian stock market may ease at the opening on Thursday amid nervousness about the coming meeting of the European Central Bank (ECB), low buyer enthusiasm and impending key rate raise by the central bank, analysts said.

“Markets will await the outcome of the ECB meeting on Thursday. … The reaction will depend on the tone and rhetoric of the ECB head at the press conference,” Yury Kravchenko of Veles Capital said, adding that “investors’ attention will also be focused on the inflation data in Russia for the last week and August ahead of a Friday meeting of the central bank.”

Andrei Vernikov of UNIVER Capital said that “the data released yesterday showed a slight slowdown in inflation for the week of 0.07%. The central bank will be forced to increase the key rate to 7% by the end of the year.”

“I expect the market to open with a slight decline. … The opening futures for the U.S. indices are in negative territory. That reduces buyer enthusiasm. Most Russian stocks are fairly valued, so their quotes are sensitive to external factors. Now there is no undervaluation of domestic stocks that would make investors buy them forgetting about the external environment,” Vernikov said.

Alexei Antonov of ALOR Broker said that “the external background is not encouraging. The U.S. futures are down 0.4%, oil adds about 0.2%, metals are trading in different directions. In such a situation it will be very difficult to continue the sustainable growth. The situation may change in the second half of the day after the speech of ECB head Christine Lagarde, who is expected to hint at the terms of reducing the program to stimulate the European economy.”

End