Russian stock market closes week up thanks to oil
MOSCOW. Dec 17 (Interfax) - The Russian stock market closed the week in positive territory thanks to higher oil prices, but growth was subdued by Moody's decision to downgrade Ireland's rating by five notches.
The MICEX stock index rose 0.4% to 1666.84 and the RTS inched down 0.02% to 1743.87. Benchmark stocks grew 0.1%-1.5%.
The MICEX index rose 0.6% in the week and the dollar-denominated RTS added 1.8%.
Gazprom led the growth on Friday, up 0.4% with 12 billion rubles worth of shares changing hands on the MICEX or around a third of the exchange's trading volume.
The MICEX also saw gains for VTB (+0.5%), Lukoil (+0.5%), Rosneft (+1.2%), Rostelecom (+1.3%), Surgutneftegas (+1%) sand Tatneft (+1.5%).
There were drops for Gazprom Neft (-1.3%), MMC Norilsk Nickel (-0.03%) and Sberbank (-0.6%).
Second-tier advancers included Silvinit (+13.7%), which rallied on reports of a merger with fellow potash miner Uralkali , although the latter fell 2.7% following its recent gains.
There were also gains for Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK) (+3.6%), SibirTelecom (+2.5%), Mechel (+2.4%), RAO UES East (+1.9%), Raspadskaya (+1.8%) and Severstal (+1.8%).
There were losses for Sollers (-2.9%), Avtovaz (-0.8%), Uralsvyazinform (-0.7%) and Polymetal (-0.6%).
RTS Classica Market volume was $2.645 million, RTS Standard turnover reached $384.2 million and MICEX volume came to 41.797 billion rubles.