| The stock market did not notice another collapse of Yukos The news about new misadventures of YUKOS, which had accumulated over the past weekend and arrived on Monday morning, provoked a fall in the value of its shares. However, yesterday the company sank in splendid isolation - other securities, breaking tradition, survived. In addition, the turnover of Yukos shares on the RTS per day exceeded the same figure for the entire last week by a third, and the volume of transactions reached almost $8 million. It is likely that the purchase of Yukos shares on the RTS was related to the recommendations of the investment bank Merrill Lynch, announced yesterday, which raised them on the company's shares from “neutral” to “buy”. According to the bank's analysts, the 12-month target price for the company's shares is $9 (not $6.4 like yesterday). “The YUKOS case is heading towards a resolution at full speed,” RBC quotes Merrill Lynch experts. “So even if stock prices fall, it will be in the short term.” The optimism of the investment bank, however, is not shared by all foreign investors: yesterday by 15:00 ADR on Yukos shares fell in price by 8.26% in Frankfurt and by 9.83% in Berlin.
Trading on the RTS was generally sluggish due to the ongoing Independence Day weekend in America. The abnormal turnover of Yukos shares was caused not by panic selling, which would be natural against the backdrop of bad news, but by aggressive buying. Most of yesterday's transactions were concluded using put-for-sale quotes. After the start of trading, the price of the company's shares fell by 5%, then the buying that began reversed the trend, and YUKOS rose in price by 1.5% compared to Friday's close. However, by 13:00, when most of the daily turnover had already been achieved, the activity of the players dropped sharply, and subsequently trading in YUKOS took place with normal activity, and the paper slowly slid down, stopping at minus 3.76%.
On the MICEX one could observe a slightly different picture. YUKOS shares fell sharply - by the end of the day by 9.77%. The course of trading on the stock exchange, as a result of which the company's shares fell in price much more than on the RTS, shows that Russian investors no longer have any illusions about the possibility of bankruptcy of the company. And non-residents still don’t understand how this can happen.
Yesterday's events on the stock market not only showed differences in the assessment of the situation around YUKOS by non-resident optimists and resident pessimists, but also, perhaps, became the beginning of another, much more interesting process. Shares of the disgraced company existed in yesterday's trading in one plane, and the rest of the blue chips in another. If “immunity” from YUKOS is secured, then trading on these securities will take place in a reservation isolated from the rest of the market according to the scenarios of investigators and the Ministry of Taxes. And fluctuations in the company's quotes will finally cease to significantly influence the dynamics of shares of other issuers. True, even the head of the Federal Financial Markets Service Oleg Vyugin does not particularly believe in this. He said yesterday that the market is unnerved by the lack of clear and reliable information about the future of Yukos, and until it is available, “the market will agitate and slide.” Igor POLISCHUK |
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