During the first decade of May global stock markets for the most part faced declining quotes. Russian МICEX lost about 6% and revisited its lows of this year, ending up below the 1400-point mark. Dropping global oil prices became the main cause for the abrupt fall of the Russian market at the beginning of May. The leading European and American stock indices also were falling during the first three trading days of the reporting period. The worst dynamics were demonstrated at the beginning of the week by the Spanish stock index that plummeted to its lows of the last three years amid investors’ worries about problems in the Spanish banking sector. On Wednesday, DJIA was going down for the sixth session in a row.

The stock markets witnessed an unexpected rebound on Thursday. МICEX Index added 1.76% and reached the 1420-point mark. The best performance was demonstrated by stocks of NOVATEK, which jumped 4.9%, and Mechel, which soared 5.5%. Investors were attracted to stocks of NOVATEK due to expectations of good financial results for the first quarter of 2012. Quotes on stocks of Mechel went up after the company released its financial statements. The leading European and American stock indices mainly added. At that, stock indices of problem countries in the euro zone became favorites of growth. Spanish IBEX rose 3.4%, and Greek FTSE ASE soared 6.2%. Investors’ optimism was caused by statements of European officials saying that countries of the euro zone do not wish for Greece to leave the   monetary union. The stock indices in the USA did not change much.

On Friday, the markets were mainly growing thanks to the U.S. Consumer Trust Index that was released in the second half of the day and that went up in May to 77.8 points from 76.4 points the month before and exceeded market expectations. The best performance was demonstrated in Russia by stocks of Rosneft which grew by 2.1%. The leading European and American stock indices changed on Friday very little. German DAX excelled among other indices of European stock exchanges by going up 0.95%, which happened due to more than 2% increase in quotes on stocks of car builders, such as Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen. Spanish IBEX was ranked as an outsider on European markets. American DJIA dropped 0.27%, and the technological sector index Nasdaq Сomposite added 0.01%. 
 
As far as weekly results are considered, DJIA declined 1.7%, S&P500 lost 1.1% over the week, and the technological sector index Nasdaq shed 0.8%. Closing of the week by the U.S. stock market on Friday showed that the negative tendency in the stock market may prevail.


Alexey Popov
Head of Securities Division
for Customer Operations