Russian stocks up on favorable markets Friday, down for month
MOSCOW. March 30 (Interfax) - The Russian stock market gained on Friday thanks to the favorable international markets, but fell in March as a whole.
The MICEX index was up 1.5% to 1517.34 and the RTS was up 1.5% also to 1637.73 on Friday. Benchmark stocks rose by up to 3.2%.
The MICEX fell 5% and the RTS 5.6% in March, but the indices rose 8.2% and 18.5% since the start of the year.
Friday saw gains for VTB (+2.1%), Gazprom (+2.4%), Gazprom Neft (+3.2%), Lukoil (+0.2%), NOVATEK (+3.2%), MMC Norilsk Nickel (+0.9%), Polyus Gold (+2.3%), Rosneft (+2.8%), Rostelecom (+0.5%), Sberbank (+1.4%), Surgutneftegas (+1.3%), Tatneft (+2.3%), Transnet (+3%) and FGC .
Second-tier advancers included MRSK Holding (+4.4%), O2TV (+3.8%), VSMPO-Avisma (+3.6%), Mechel (+3.4%), OGK-5 (+3.2%) and TGK-13 (+3.1%).
Decliners included Sistema (RTS: AFKS (-1.6%), Raspadskaya (-0.9%), Zavod Diod (-0.6%), TMK (-0.5%) and TGK-9 (-0.5%).
Combined trading volume on the main MICEX-RTS market was 57.696 billion rubles, of which 20.316 billion rubles in Sberbank ordinary shares. Standard market turnover was $327.95 million and Classica - $3.82 million.