Russian stocks may fall on Tuesday in line with oil prices

MOSCOW, Aug 23 (PRIME) -- Russian stocks are likely to contract at Tuesday’s opening following oil prices, analysts said.

“I think that the overbought MICEX index may edge down about 0.5% at the first half of the day,” Timur Nigmatullin, an analyst at investment company Finam, said.

“It may be stripped of yesterday’s growth drivers, namely the increase of the energy and the consumer sectors. The former factor lost its support due to lower oil prices, while the latter is no more a support due to a continued fall of the retail trade turnover in July.”

The background prior to the opening of the trading session is negative as the Brent oil price has fallen 0.903% to U.S. $48.72 per barrel as of 8.50 a.m. Moscow time, the U.S. stock index futures are rising insignificantly, while Asian floors are showing no common dynamics.

“Technical analysis provides no reason to speak about suspension of consolidation of the RTS index. The energy sources market continues its downward correction as traders are less certain that OPEC is able to restrain the supply limit on the global market significantly,” Anton Startsev, a leading analyst at investment company Olma, said.

The ruble is likely to follow the oil price and test a 65 level against the U.S. dollar at the beginning of the day, Startsev added.

“Two weeks ago the oil prices received an excessively positive impact, and now they are under pressure, as speculations dragged the oil prices up high prior to a meeting in Algeria, but problems of the market’s oversaturation and excessive supply are very unlikely to be solved there,” Vasily Kopospov, head of the stock market analysis department at KIT Finance Broker, said.

Ilya Frolov, a senior analyst at Promsvyazbank, said besides external factors, local traders will continue to track financial reports of Russian companies, as top lender Sberbank, oil major Lukoil, hydropower giant RusHydro, uncut diamond giant ALROSA, aluminum giant UC RUSAL and others are to publish their financial reports until the end of August.

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