Russian stocks rise on generally positive foreign background

MOSCOW, Sep 23 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market increased significantly at the beginning of the day on Wednesday thanks to a positive external background, but lost most of its gains later, analysts said.

The MOEX Russia Index grew 1.10% to 2,916.39 and the RTS rose 0.23% to 1,195.77.

“The MOEX Russia Index and the RTS index stayed in the positive territory, but lost most of their gains by the end of the trading session… The RTS demonstrated weaker performance thanks to the new local lowest of the ruble against the U.S. dollar,” Veles Broker analyst Yelena Kozhukhova said.

U.S. markets were trading mixed within a 0.5% range, European bourses demonstrated positivity, as well as the oil market with the nearest Brent and WTI futures adding around 1.5% by the end of the day, she added. 

Otkritie Broker analyst Andrei Kochetkov said that the purchase of TCS Group, which includes Tinkoff Bank, by IT giant Yandex for U.S. $5.48 billion was the main news of the day. The market focused its excitement on Yandex’s shares as the company has thus started to transform into an informational and financial group. The shares jumped by over 20% and the Moscow Exchange closed trading in them and introduced a discrete auction.

Kozhukhova said that oil companies including Tatneft, which lost 3.52%, continued to fall on the back of amendments of their mineral extraction tax benefits.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Yandex	+2.39	5017	65.258
Sberbank	-0.99	227.61	15.070
Norilsk Nickel	+1.02	18950	6.010
Lukoil	-1.13	4478	5.701
Gazprom	-0.81	177.55	5.302

(76.2711 rubles – U.S. $1)

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