On Tuesday, most blue ships headed south on weakness in Asian trading and mixed performances in European indices. US exchanges also kicked off trading with a gap to the downside after the long weekend, which predetermined the bearish close on domestic bourses. The RTS Index retreated 1.13% to settle at 1,904.76. After Russian trading closed the ISM Manufacturing Index was released in the United States, which dropped to 52.9 in August down from 53.8 in July, while it was forecast to decline to 53. While the index remains above 50, this points to vibrant business activity in the US industrial sector and this factor in turn holds out hopes that Russian equities will start off Wednesday with gains. Throughout the session crude futures hovered around $73.30 for Brent contracts in anticipation of more clarity over Hurricane Felix that could affect oil platforms in the Gulf. Negative performances in most O&G names on MICEX Gazprom dropped 0.72%, Rosneft slipped 0.38%, Lukoil eased 0.57%, Gazprom Neft inched down 0.41% and Surgutneftegaz gave up 1.18% - were largely driven by news about a hike in Russian crude oil export duties to a record $250.30/t effective October 1, 2007. Tatneft gained 0.27% on news that the company expects to receive MET benefits when developing bituminous oilfields. Based on the results of a first trading session after the spin-off of WGC-5 and TGC-5, UES commons pulled back 3.17% and prefs plunged 3.64%. This downturn was forecast and attributable to a 6.3% decline (i.e. the proportion of the spun-off assets in the holdings market capitalization) the market value of UES securities after the above utility concerns turned into standalone businesses. This means that a UES shareholder will obtain a portion in WGC-5 and TGC-5 stocks based on their stake held in UES before the spin-off. MTS released its strong Q207 US GAAP financial statement, according to which the mobile operators net profit skyrocketed 72.4% y-o-y to $507.9 mln and sales soared 31.9% to $1,968.6 mln. Meanwhile, MTS lost 1.32% on MICEX, as market players likely decided to take profits. In the second-tier names, VTB North West (-5%) was among the days top decliners due to VTBs decision to roll back the banks takeover for an indefinite period of time. Other blue-chip stories finished the day on MICEX as follows: Norilsk Nickel tumbled 1.05%, Sberbank fell 0.82%, VTB inched down 0.08% and Rostelecom added on 0.64%. Market turnover totaled $7,375.90 mln on MICEX and $52.80 mln on benchmark RTS.
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[Source: Russian Stock Market Blog]
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