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The Slump’s Year
The benchmarks of Russia’s stock exchanges, RTS and MICEX, shed over 2 percent yesterday. With general absence of buyers, the investors continue to aggressively sell the stocks. Even the analysts harbor no hope for soon revival of the market. Renaissance Capital downgraded its RTS outlook by 20 percent to 2,350.
Regular slumps on global stock exchanges began a year ago, when the U.S. mortgage lending crisis extended worldwide. Russia’s stock exchanges marked the anniversary by another decline. RTS lost 2.36 percent to 1,895.86 yesterday and MICEX fell 2.75 percent to 1,451.47.
“The decline happened with no particular news,” said Troika Dialog chief trader Timur Nasardinov. “The sales on the market continue in the environment of total absence of buyers.” Nonresident investors were selling aggressively and Sberbank was the leader of losers with its drop of 5.75 percent on MICEX. Nearly all blue chips followed the downward trend. The exception was Gazprom Neft (which grew 1.35 percent on MICEX) and preferred stocks of Surgutneftegaz (+2.6 percent).
Overall, MICEX has fallen 16.3 percent since the beginning of the transformation of the U.S. mortgage crisis into the global one past August. RTS benchmark has shed 4.9 percent ever since.
The global situation became more or less stable by late 2007, but another negative wave gained momentum early 2008. Russia’s indices lost 18 percent to 19 percent in two months, but managed to recover by mid-March. Russia appeared one of the most promising markets if compared with the aggravating problems in the West.
“Russia’s market had held on but it was swept over in July,” said Andrei Kilin, the asset manager from Alfa Capital. One of the basic reasons of decline was Vladimir Putin’s attack on Mechel.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 05, 2008
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