Russian stocks rise on low volume as cbank keeps key rate at 10%

MOSCOW, Feb 3 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market increased slightly on Friday on the back of a positive trend on European markets but the trading activity was low ahead of a meeting of the central bank and remained so after it, as the authority expectedly left the key rate unchanged at 10%, analysts said.

The MICEX grew 0.41% to 2,226.61 and the RTS increased 1.62% to 1,190.40.

“The Russian stock market is trying to restart the upward trend today. Despite Brent oil did not manage to stick above U.S. $57, purchases predominate in Russian assets. Bulls are supported by the situation on foreign trading floors, where the German DAX and the French CAC 40 add 0.2% and 0.9%, respectively,” Finam analyst Bogdan Zvarich said.

“The market activity decreased significantly, which is quite unsurprising on a day of a meeting of the central bank’s board of directors and publication of the U.S. labor market data,” Andrei Kochetkov, an analyst at Otkritie Broker, said.

Anastasia Sosnova, a leading analyst at Bank Rossiysky Capital, said that the central bank kept the key rate at 10% expectedly. In the following statement, the authority said that keeping the monetary policy moderately severe is necessary to consolidate the inflation trend. “In fact, everything written in the comment of the authority confirmed the expectations.” The Russian market continued an idealess trading session after that, she said.

Alfa-Capital analyst Andrei Shenk said that the amount of foreign currency purchases announced by the Finance Ministry on Friday did not come as a surprise, which is why volatility remained low.

Kochetkov said that an increase of Russia’s purchasing managers’ index (PMI) in service industry to 58.4 in January was a positive factor for the Russian market.

The leaders of Thursday’s trading session corrected downwards on Friday. Bashneft decreased 4.33%, TMK fell 3.05%, Sollers went down 3.86% and Severstal 2.04%, he said.

Metals companies were pressurized by a strengthening ruble. Oil and gas sector shares grew as the oil price touched a level of $57 per barrel, Kochetkov said.

Below are the MICEX’ five most active stocks on Friday:

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	+0.56	173.8	6.026
Gazprom	+0.37	149.35	3.108
Norilsk Nickel	-1.62	10089	2.547
Surgutneftegas pref	+2.55	35.38	2.400
Lukoil	+0.18	3370.5	1.619

(59.9858 rubles – U.S. $1)

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