Trade war pushes Russian stocks, foreign bourses, oil price down

MOSCOW, Aug 23 (PRIME) – The Russian stocks contracted on Friday together with the major foreign bourses and oil prices as Beijing and Washington escalated their trade war, analysts said.

The MOEX Russia Index fell 0.54% to 2,660.74 and the RTS decreased 1.11% to 1,268.45.

“Market tranquility today was disrupted by a statement of the Chinese authorities that the country will impose retaliatory duties on U.S. goods…The statement lead to a rapid contraction of futures for major U.S. bourses and a more than 2% slump of oil prices. The trade war that faded into the background in several previous days was reignited,” Vadim Kabakov, director for strategies at investment company Finam, said.

The Russian stock market reacted very nervously to the news, and contraction in oil prices led to the sales in the ruble, Kabakov said.

“Volatility is rising at international bourses at the end of the week. The latest activity happened after comments by U.S. Federal Reserve System (Fed) representative James Bullard that the Fed will discuss a rate reduction by 50 basis points at its next meeting. But the markets were shuttered by the new signs of escalation of the trade conflict,” Arseny Dadashev, director of the Academy for Management of Finance and Investment, said.

Andrei Kochetkov, senior analyst at Otkritie Broker, said that shares of the Moscow Exchange outperformed the market and grew 0.92% to 93.50 rubles after the company announced a 21.3% year-on-year growth of its net profit to 5.9 billion rubles in April–June.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	0.00	219.50	12.059
Gazprom	-1.17	229.35	6.697
Lukoil	-1.73	5183.50	3.865
Norilsk Nickel	-0.50	15382.00	2.430
Rosneft	-0.10	405.60	1.289

(65.6196 rubles – U.S. $1)

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