Aug
20
Last Tuesday the fall of Russian stock market has continued at an accelerated pace. Do note – all of the required prerequisites have appeared to propel the fall. Virtually all sides of the market were hit with negative issues. First of all – the general tense military-political environment in the world – such as uncertainty regarding the consequences for Russia, after country’s intervention into South-Ossetia conflict. The announcements appearing lately from a number of western countries’ representatives regarding Russia – have an obviously negative nature, hitting Russian market as well. The wave of fall went on around one after noon, when foreign ministers of NATO member countries said that Russia would not go unnoticed, following its actions on Caucasus regions.
Second important issue – the environment of foreign commodity and stock markets, failing during Russia’s trades. Some negative statistics off US on number of new housings built and producer prices, as well as new fears regarding the expansion of mortgage crisis – have all brought upon a second wave of RTS fall. The fire has been fueled even more by the cheapening oil. Whereas resulting stocks of oil & gas firms have proved a considerably pressure upon RTS. However – we think that situation is overly-emotional and after the fall of two consecutive months, the stocks finally consider all risks in their prices.
Tuesday’s results: RTS has been reduced by -5.21% and closed at year and half lowest of 1685.6 points. Negative influence upon the indicator has been brought by stocks of Gazprom (-6.95%), LUKOIL (-6.72%) and Sberbank (-3.86%).
Classic market’s turnover has formed 50.2 mn USD on RTS yesterday. Whilst Sberbank (24.5 mn USD) outran other stocks far away. Two next most significant volumes have been achieved by stocks of Gazprom (9.9 mn USD) and LUKOIL (6.5 mn USD).
The short-term trend of RTS index dynamics remains negative. An additional negative pressure could be formed through statistics published earlier: at its back US indices lost over a percent, while European indices dropped -2%. We think that Russian market would follow the foreign grounds.
Main Russian Stock news
Mechel’s happy ending.
Federal Antimonopoly Service of RF obliged Mechel to decrease coking coal prices by 15%, reported Igor Artemyev, the head of FAS to the journalists on Tuesday. FAS also decided to impose a fine of 5% out of coking coal sales per annum (about 790 mn RUR) on the company.