Russian stock market wraps up Q1 near 2011 highs
MOSCOW. March 31 (Interfax) - The Russian stock market completed the first quarter of this year with the RTS and MICEX indices near this year's highs thanks to rising oil prices and world stock markets.
Thursday trading ended with the MICEX index having dipped 0.11% to 1813.59 points (the high for the day and year - 1820.13 points), the RTS index rising 0.41% to 2044.2 points (2047.8 points), and prices for most benchmark shares moving mixed within 0.1%-1.9%.
Polyus Gold gained 1.9% on the MICEX Stock Exchange, Surgutneftegas was up 1.8% (ordinary shares) and 1.4% (prefs), Transneft 1.5%, and Rostelecom 1.8% (ordinary shares) and 0.3% (prefs).
Rosneft was down 1.7%, Norilsk Nickel lost 0.7%, VTB 0.3%, and Sberbank of Russia 0.3% as well.
On the MICEX second tier, OGK-5 rose 5.3% on the day, OGK-6 gained 3.5%, TGK-1 3.4%, RAO ES Vostock 2.9%, Pharmacy Chain 36.6 2.7%, Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) 2.7%, and OGK-4 2.6%.
AFK Sistema-Hals was down 2.3%, the bank Vozrozhdenie lost 2%,RTM 1.6%, RBC Information Systems (RTS:RBCI) 1.5%, and Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK) 1.5%.
Combined trading volume was $30.021 million on the RTS Classic, $393.259 million on the RTS Standard, and over 53.824 billion rubles on the MICEX Stock Exchange.
