U.S. economic stats heat up Russian stock market
MOSCOW. Jan 17 (Interfax) - The Russian stock market topped the 1520-point market on the MICEX index amid positive movement on world trading floors buoyed by decent new quarterly reports and statistics out of the United States, with MegaFon and Quadra in the lead.
The MICEX closed up 0.6% at 1523.74 and the RTS index 0.9% at 1585.44 points.
VTB rose 0.1% on the day, Gazprom gained 0.9%, Gazprom Neft 0.2%, Lukoil 0.3%, Polyus Gold 0.5%, Rostelecom 1.6%, Sberbank of Russia 1.2%, Surgutneftegas 1% (prefs 1.7%), Tatneft 0.8%, and Transneft 1.5%.
MegaFon rose 4.5% to 803 rubles and Quadra 5.8% to 0.0049 of a ruble.
On the Moscow exchange's second tier, Aeroflot - Russian Airlines rose 3.1%, IDGC Northern Caucasus gained 3%, KamAZ 2.9%, Mechel 2.7%, Magnit 2.1%, and Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) 1.9%.
O2TV was down 3%, VSMPO-Avisma 1.7%, TGK-2 1.2%, Razgulyay Group 0.8%, and Acron 0.8%.
Combined trading on the exchange's main market amounted to 28.782 billion rubles for the day (with 8.449 billion rubles involved in Sberbank ordinary stock deals), on the Standard sector to $60.416 million and on the Classica sector to $1.514 million.