With several negative economic factors at play in October, including several forced closures of Russia’s main bourses – RTS and MICEX – during the month, the last time being on Oct. 27, it certainly came as a surprise that most Russian equities did not only just display ‘signs’ of life, but also robustly started the last week of the mostly negative month on the positive, gaining 1.2% over the last trading day on Oct. 24 to close at 555.95 pts on Oct. 28.
However, most of the preceding tradings were negative, as the downward shifts in equity values reflected the domestic and global investors’ downbeat sentiments. For instance, the RTS-1 Index, which tracks the Russian blue-chips, dipped 17.7% from Oct. 20-24 to peg at 549.43, while the RTS-2 Index, which tracks the ‘second-tier’ equities, was also down, shedding 14.99% to 770.48.
The negative trend was led by Sberbank (-33.47pts), Gazprom (-20.21) and LUKoil (-17.99). Consequently, the trade volume for that week at RTS totaled Rub36.9bln (or $1.4bln). Industry-wise, the highest beatings on RTS, in terms of price-change dynamics, were taken by the financial sector (-23.12%), metallurgy and telecoms (both - 18.44), while the smallest loss was posted by the industrial sector (-9.3).
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