MOSCOW: The Russian stock market rose for the third straight day on Friday thanks to a rise in global risk appetite, with the local focus on Sunday's parliamentary election, which may show a fall in support for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's ruling party.
The dollar-based RTS index rose 0.5 percent in low volatility trade by 1349 GMT and the rouble-traded MICEX was also up 0.4 percent.
This week, the RTS index has added 10.8 percent, while MICEX has gained 7.3 percent, the biggest weekly rise since October 2010.
The indexes were climbing on the back of gains in blue chips such as Sberbank, Gazprom and Rosneft, said Evgeniy Volkov at Probusinessbank.
"It looks like shares are being towed higher in a reassessment of investors' portfolios. But the strong gains this week are a limiting factor (for further growth) and that's why people are becoming wary before the weekend," he said.
The local focus is on Sunday's election, which is widely expected to result in a victory for Putin's United Russia, but may show the party is losing its popularity.
"We do not see any significant market reaction to the election results unless there are major surprises, and the likelihood of this is infinitesimally small," analysts at Uralsib Capital said in a note.
Shares in the country's second-largest food retailer Magnit were down 4.0 percent on the MICEX exchange after the company closed the books on its secondary public offer on the London stock exchanges.
Analysts at Sberbank said in a note that a rally could continue in coming days, bringing the MICEX index to the next resistance at 1550-1560 points.
Commodity markets remained buoyant for Russian assets, with futures for Brent crude hovering close to $110 per barrel, above the average price of $108 factored into 2011 budget.
This also bolstered the rouble, which was steady at 30.76 versus the dollar and at 41.49 against the euro
Versus the euro-dollar baskets the rouble was stable at 35.59, remaining in the range of 33.70-35.70 where the central bank does not carry out forex interventions to ease pressure on the rouble.
"There are no new ideas on the market, no will to do anything after the basket fell drastically on Wednesday (after the joint central bank action) and many suffered substantial losses," said Artyom Gavrilov, chief dealer at Nomos Bank.
The spread on Russia's dollar bonds over comparable US securities narrowed to 283 basis points from nearly 320 points seen in the beginning of the week according to JP Morgan's EMBI+ debt indexes, which also pointed to a lower intention to cut exposure towards risky assets.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.