International stock markets continued to decline on fears of aggravated crisis on the US mortgage market on Friday. Most Russian blue chips kicked off in the red. Liquid names drifted south further down the road and only slightly corrected upward in the afternoon. By the closing bell, the RTS Index eased 2.16% to 1,897.2 and the MICEX Index lost 1.92% to 1,644.13.Banking shares were the hardest hit for the second day in a row due to fears that problems on the US mortgage lending market could spill over to other sectors. Sberbank commons lost 4.04% and prefs 3.67%. VTB declined to the lowest level since the placement, down 3.62% to $0.1277. Oil and gas stocks continued to decline in line with the market, while crude prices remained nearly flat on Friday. Lukoil fell 2.77%, Gazprom Neft eased 2.7%, Tatneft receded 1.22%, Rosneft tumbled 0.88%. Surgut was among a few stocks to buck the trend, up 1.92%. NorNickel lost 2.43% on MICEX due to a decline in nickel futures. UES again outperformed the market on MICEX, with commons falling 0.87% and prefs rising 0.2%. MTS declined 0.75%, while Rostelecom grew 0.63%. Telecoms currently stand to gain the most, since they are less exposed to possible losses from a crisis if the mortgage lending crisis aggravates and global economic growth eases. Market turnover picked up to 95.38 mln on benchmark RTS and $7,858.30 mln on MICEX.
Read More...
[Source: Russian Stock Market Blog]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment