Russian stock market continues slide
MOSCOW. May 18 (Interfax) - The Russian stock market continued to slump Friday morning along with other world markets, the slide picking up speed on news of Greece and a number of Spanish banks' ratings being lowered, the MICEX index approached an October low, and Gazprom share value returned to the summer of 2009.
By 11:10 a.m. Moscow time, the MICEX index had shed 2.87% to 1251.32 points, having dropped as far as 1246.52 points earlier on (a point not seen since last October 4). The RTS index was down 3.4% at 1269.18 points (the minimum last year - 1217 points on October 5). Benchmark stock ruble prices on the MICEX-RTS had lost as much as 5%.
Gazprom fell 3.1% to 138.29 rubles (137.07 rubles earlier on). The stock had hit 134.95 rubles at closing time on July 14, 2009.
Traders were saying that the capitalization of the entire Russian 'national asset' is now about $104.5 billion, which is not much more than the value of Facebook, which had its IPO the day before at $38 per share and whose capitalization is estimated at more than $100 billion.