Russian stocks rise marginally on lack of substantial drivers

MOSCOW, Dec 29 (PRIME) -- Russian stocks edged up on Friday in thin trade, but the external background provided the market with no strong drivers during the final trading day of 2017, analysts said.

The MOEX Russia Index rose 0.33% to 2,109.74 and the RTS increased 0.33% to 1,154.43.

The indicators grew in the final minutes of trading after spending the day around the closing figures of Thursday.

“(Russian indices) have switched to idealess consolidation within small ranges since the start of the trade. Trading at the local market was expectedly thin. Condition of the background was of little significance, but the external factors still did not provide any signals for opening of new positions of closing of the existing ones,” Vitaly Manzhos, a senior risk manager at investment company Nord Capital, said.

Alexei Kalachyov, an expert at investment company Finam, said that European trade floors also remained flat due to the lack of any important news or interesting statistics.

“Local floors also did not want to set any new records in the last trading day of the year, this is why trade was calm and predictable…We saw no news, no statistics, and no scandals this day, and it looked like traders have already started celebrations,” Kalachyov said.

Andrei Kochetkov, an analyst at Otkritie Broker, said that the only noticeable movement in shares was the increase of common and preferred shares of metals and mining group Mechel by 4.56% to 147.75 rubles and by 6.88% to 132.05 rubles, respectively, and the growth of Mechel’s affiliate coal producer Raspadskaya by 2.18% to 89.01 rubles.

“Active interest in these shares was connected to expectations of improvement of demand for coking coal in the mid-term, especially demand from China. Last week Mechel said it signed a long-term contract to export coking coal to Serbia. Raspadskaya also reported an increase in production of coking coal of deficit grade OS in late October,” Kochetkov said.

Below are the MOEX Russia Index’ five most active stocks on Friday:

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	+0.45	225.20	4.258
Gazprom	-0.02	130.50	2.116
Norilsk Nickel	+1.46	10850.00	0.999
Magnit	+1.12	6340.00	0.986
Lukoil	+0.53	3334.50	0.950

(57.6291 rubles – U.S. $1)

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