Russian main indexes MICEX & RTS halted

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by Michael88, Sep 18, 2008.

  1. 3 days now MICEX and RTS are halted... MICEX lost more than 10% within 1 hour yesterday when market was open for a short time...

     
  2. Putin: "Why it's closed? Because I said so!"
    [​IMG]
     
  3. Cutten

    Cutten

    Market closures are usually a great buying opportunity when they re-open.

    It's funny to see Putin up against something he can't control, gives him the middle finger, and doesn't give a fuck what he says :)
     
  4. Russian mortgages - they mention Russian mortgage agency specifically.

    Looks like Russian exchanges are closed until Friday, or maybe longer.

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/48a94422-8561-11dd-a1ac-0000779fd18c.html

    Russia injects $19.5bn to restore markets
    By Catherine Belton and Charles Clover in Moscow and Reuters

    Published: September 17 2008 19:10 | Last updated: September 18 2008 13:25

    Russia’s president said on Thursday that the country would spend $19.59bn to support and stabilise its financial markets as share trading on its two main exchanges remained shut.

    Half the funds would come from the budget, Mr Medvedev said, as he unveiled a crisis plan in the face of the biggest test of the country’s market economy since the financial crisis of August 1998.

    Share trading on the country’s two biggest exchanges, MICEX and RTS, would resume on Friday after they were shut again on Wednesday to halt a market rout that led to the steepest declines since August 1998. In addition, Alexei Kudrin, finance minister, said Russia’s mortgage agency would get a cash injection of 60 billion roubles, while major banks Sberbank, VTB and Gazprombank would lend $2.37bn to stock market players.

    Mr Kudrin said Russia planned to slash export duties on oil and refined products to allow oil firms hit by a weaker crude price to save $5.5 billion and give a boost to their floundering stocks. Russian oil firms have been selling oil at a loss in the past week as export duties, which are set with a two months lag, have been based on record high June global prices, which have slumped nearly 40 percent since then. Mr Kudrin said the government would reduce the oil export duty by 23 percent to $372 per tonne from October 1, down from the previously-announced $485.5 per tonne.

    The market collapse has wiped nearly $800bn off the country’s stock exchanges in a matter of months and sent stocks spinning down to levels last seen in 2005.

    Investors were waiting on Wednesday night for the completion of a bail-out plan for KIT Finance, which confirmed on Monday it had failed to meet several obligations.

    The brokerage said on Wednesday night it was in the final stages of talks to sell a controlling stake to Leader, an asset management company owned by allies of Mr Putin.

    One senior investment banker said a mid-sized commercial bank began to fail to make payments on Wednesday morning, causing the government to pull the plug on the stock exchanges.

    Traders and analysts said settlement systems at both exchanges had failed as panic set in.

    The finance ministry pledged to pump a further $60bn into short-term deposits in the three main state-controlled banks, however, earlier injections had failed to be transferred into the broader system as interbank lending froze.