Russian stocks rise on domestic optimism despite oil correction

MOSCOW, Dec 14 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market rose on Thursday encouraged by an annual news conference by President Vladimir Putin and Sberbank’s investor day, analysts said.

The MOEX Russia Index grew 0.96% to 2,152.41 and the RTS rose 1.04% to 1,153.32.

“The Russian stock market traded in the green territory on Thursday. There were only a handful corporate events, and traders were majorly focused on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual news conference. The president evaluated the country’s economic state positively despite a number of problems,” Otkritie Broker analyst Andrei Kochetkov said.

“A thing important for the market is that the head of the state mentioned a negative impact of a mounting regional debt, which forms from commercial banks’ credits. Some restrictions may be imposed here. On the other hand, such policy changes may be good for state-run banks.”

Raiffeisen Capital analyst Sofya Kirsanova said that the local stock market bounced back despite a 0.5% fall in the Brent oil price due to Sberbank’s optimism sparkled by CEO German Gref during an investor day in London. The stock added 3.65% to 229.9 rubles on the news that the bank plans its IFRS net profit to reach 1 trillion rubles by 2020 and wants to pay 1 trillion rubles in dividends during 2018-2020.

The Brent crude price continued to slide following the U.S. Department of Energy’s report demonstrating a rise in oil stocks and the International Energy Agency’s oil market report projecting a higher oil output of non-OPEC states in 2018 than OPEC’s expectations.

Promsvyazbank, Russia’s 10th largest bank by assets, slid 7.39% to 0.0714 rubles after business daily Vedomosti reported that the central bank had demanded that the bank should raise reserves by about 130 billion rubles.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Promsvyazbank	-7.39%	0.0714	16.503
Sberbank	+3.65%	229.9	12.541
Gazprom	+0.26%	135.91	3.054
VTB Bank	+0.6%	0.0504	1.716
Magnit	+1.41%	6490	1.446

(59.1446 rubles – U.S. $1)

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