Russian stocks may fall on weak crude, foreign negativity

MOSCOW, Feb 3 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market may open the main trading session with a moderate decrease on Thursday, as foreign platforms are mostly in the red zone and crude oil futures are too weak to show any support, analysts said.

Algo Capital’s team headed by Vitaly Manzhos expects the main trading session to open with a decline of 0.2–0.8% on the MOEX Russia Index, in the range of 3,515–3,535 points, as the current state of the external background can be characterized as moderately negative.

Investors have a great excuse to start locking in the profits earned last week, and the MOEX Russia Index has all chances to go under 3,500 points, which will only make many investors to take profits more actively, and speculators to open the shorts, Alexei Antonov of Alor Broker said.

Oil futures may fall further on the results of the OPEC meeting, in which case the situation will get even worse for the Russian stock market, Antonov said.

Vasily Karpunin of BCS Investment Group said that the market lacks drivers, which is why it has been consolidating for two weeks. Today, the market may pay attention to NLMK’s International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) financial statements for October–December 2021, as well as the results of Acron’s board meeting on dividends and Enel Russia’s 2021 operational results, he said.

According to Freedom Finance’s Georgy Vashchenko, the course of trading will be largely determined by the external and news background, and unemployment data in the U.S. will be in the center of attention.

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