Russian stocks rise on expectations of lifting restrictions

MOSCOW, Apr 27 (PRIME) – The Russian stocks grew on Monday in line with the majority of foreign bourses on investor hopes that some restrictions that the countries imposed after the start of the coronavirus pandemic will be lifted, analysts said.

The MOEX Russia Index rose by 0.35% to 2,570.91 and the RTS firmed by 0.22% to 1,083.68.

“The week started with active growth of the stock floors all around the world, which supported the Russian securities. Asia had a positive trade session today gaining 3% following the Japanese central bank’s expansion of the stimulation program by completely lifting its limits on purchases of securities,” Valery Yemelyanov, analyst at investment company Freedom Finance, said.

The bourses of Europe and futures for the U.S. stock indices were also in the green zone on the news that Italy and France will relaunch some companies very soon and Spain’s decision to start a step-by-step lifting of restrictions, Yemelyanov said.

Yelena Kozhukhova, analyst at investment company Veles Capital, said that the futures for the Brent and the WTI oil blends lost 5–18% as concerns about the overstocked storages returned to the market. However, the oil prices were still a bit higher than last week’s low, she said.

“At the same time, investors did not pay significant attention to contraction of oil prices as they tried to remain optimistic,” she said, adding that the Asian and Western bourses’ growth outweighed the impact of the oil price fall.

Andrei Kochetkov, senior analyst at Otkritie Broker, said that the global depositary receipts of agricultural holding Rusagro outperformed the market growing by 2.76% to 618.40 rubles on a company’s report about a 16% increase in revenue of the sugar business and a 15% growth of the dairy division’s revenue.

Preferred shares of oil pipeline monopoly Transneft looked weaker than the market and lost 2.15% to 134,050 rubles because the securities may be excluded from the MSCI Russia index, Kochetkov said.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-0.01	188.90	8.281
Lukoil	-2.01	4650.00	7.933
Gazprom	+0.31	186.29	4.417
Norilsk Nickel	-0.58	20034.00	3.891
Rosneft	-0.34	322.90	3.329

(74.7163 rubles – U.S. $1)

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