Russian stock market goes flat after morning gap
MOSCOW. Feb 15 (Interfax) - The Russian stock market, after an over 1% gap up on Wednesday morning, allowing its stock indexes to reach their highest values for the year, went flat for the rest of the day, despite positive macroeconomic statistics from Europe.
The MICEX index rose 1.1% to 1579.38 on Wednesday, and the RTS was up 1.05% to 1661.36. Benchmark stocks grew by up to 2.1%, led by Uralkali (+4.2%) on the expectations of a possible inclusion of the company's shares in the MSCI Russia index and a completion of reconstructing the production lines at Berezniki-3.
Other gainers included Mobile TeleSystems (+2.1%), Surgutneftegas (+2%), Tatneft (+1.9%), RusHydro (+1.9%), Rosneft (+1.8%), FGC UES (+1.4%), VTB (+1.3%), Severstal (+1.3%), Sberbank of Russia (+0.9%), Lukoil (+0.8%), MMC Norilsk Nickel (+0.8%), Rostelecom (+0.3%) and Gazprom (+0.1%).
Blue chip losers were Gazprom Neft (-0.1%), Polyus Gold (-3.5%) and Transneft prefs (-1%).
Second-tier winners included Sollers Group (+5.5%) and Uralkali (+4.1%).
Combined trading volume on the main MICEX-RTS market was 49.34 billion rubles. Standard market turnover was $388.658 million and Classica - $3.436 million.