Russian stocks may open flat prior to US Fed meeting report

MOSCOW, Dec 19 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market is likely to open with marginal changes and consolidate later on Wednesday thanks to a partial recovery of U.S. stock exchange indices futures and oil prices following Tuesday’s steep fall, analysts said.

“The external background seen before the start of the Russian trade session can be called positive. At the same time, improvement on the crude market is too low to offset yesterday’s significant fall so the domestic market will have no considerable growth potential in the first half of the day,” Vitaly Manzhos, senior risk manager at investment company Algo Capital, said.

Finam analyst Sergei Drozdov said that a global escape from risk ahead of the upcoming meeting of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s key rate decision pushed the Brent oil price 5.9% down to a 14-month low on Tuesday.

Manzhos said that the major U.S. benchmarks futures and the Brent oil price are currently seen recovering by around 0.6–0.7% so he expects the MOEX Russia index to open neutrally at around 2,350 and to consolidate later in the day.

Local investors will also track news from meetings of the boards of directors of power companies Enel Russia and TGC-14.

End