Russian stocks seen growing as US introduces mild sanctions

MOSCOW, Apr 16 (PRIME) -- The Russian stock market will likely edge up at opening on Friday as U.S. sanctions turned out to be milder than expected, analysts said.

"The sanctions introduced against Russia yesterday were not really painful and scary. The prohibition to American investors to buy Russian debt was the most negative thing. But this relates only primary purchases, the securities are still available on the secondary market and no one forces investors to sell the securities acquired earlier," Alor Broker senior analyst Alexei Antonov said.

"This is why nothing serious has happened, especially for the stock market. But the sanctions risks are off the agenda now, and we have to price in this factor by driving prices higher."

Andrei Kochetkov, leading analyst for global research at Otkritie Broker, said that the external background for the Russian market is weakly positive as the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 set new records. The Asian markets firmed in the morning. Industrial metals demonstrated slight volatility and oil broke through a U.S. $67 threshold.

Antonov said that Sberbank remains fundamentally strong, Rosneft seems locally oversold, the oil companies in general can recover, while the ferrous metals companies used to buck a falling trend and should be dealt with cautiously.

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