Russian stocks rise receiving support from oil prices

MOSCOW, Jul 12 (PRIME) -- Russian stocks rose on Wednesday supported by firming oil prices and robust U.S. indices, analysts said.

The MICEX edged up 0.86% to 1,954.39 and the RTS increased 2.41% to 1,025.68.

“The major driver for the local market was the situation on the energy market, where the Brent oil price rose above U.S. $48 per barrel thanks to data on hydrocarbon reserves from the American Petroleum Institute,” Bogdan Zvarich, an analyst at investment company Finam, said.

Mikhail Krylov, director of the research department at investment company Golden Hills Capital AM, said higher Dow Jones and S&P 500 supported the Russian market as well. The local market also welcomed improvement in the transportation sector with the introduction of futures for shares of national flag carrier Aeroflot, which will most likely be more liquid than futures of other Russian shares, he said.

He also said that the power sector grew due to talks about the possibility of freeing power generators from tariff regulation and about keeping a dividend threshold of 50% of the net profit in 2017.

Power producer Mosenergo grew 4.88% to 2.525 rubles and power holding Inter RAO rose 3.09% to 3.8245 rubles.

Andrei Kochetkov, an analyst at Otkritie Broker, said that the financial sector of the Moscow Exchange looked stronger than the market, which may mean that foreigners started to return to Russia. Top bank Sberbank grew 2.51% to 160.85 rubles.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	+2.51	160.85	11.246
Gazprom	+0.07	124.87	2.837
Rosneft	+0.30	320.55	2.428
Lukoil	+1.37	2914.50	2.079
ALROSA	+0.15	94.10	1.959

(60.7379 rubles – U.S. $1)

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