If America continues to fall, our market won't hold

The main event of yesterday was the publication of inflation data. The price growth was slightly below analysts' forecasts. And this gives good reason to believe that the Fed will continue to postpone the moment of the beginning of the curtailment of the program of pumping money into the economy.

There was an excellent reason for growth, especially since the S&P500 Index is trading at the lower boundary of the uptrend channel. But instead of bouncing off the support, the indicator went lower. And this suggests not very good thoughts...

But so far nothing terrible is happening, attempts to test the lower boundary of the channel were observed repeatedly, and all of them ended with the renewal of the historical maximum. But if America continues to fall, then our market will not hold, and it will be necessary to reduce the profitable medium-term positions.

The Russian stock market managed to continue growing yesterday, adding almost 0.4% to the Moscow Exchange Index during the main session. However, blue chips traded in different directions. Oil & gas was up as we expected. Metallurgists also fell steadily due to falling metal and coal prices.

Aluminum and nickel bounced this morning. But despite that, we recommend to take some profits (those who have them) on Rusal as well - these securities are technically highly overbought.

Oil continues to rise, adding 0.7% this morning and crossing the $74 a barrel mark. Traders are waiting for another reduction in the already small production in the Gulf of Mexico because of the new hurricane. It is possible that the quotes will try to test the level of $75 per barrel. We do not consider a stronger move yet.

Gas prices exceeded $800 per thousand cubic meters yesterday. As we expected, investors' demand shifted from overbought to Gazprom. Both securities are worth holding in mid-term portfolios, but still, in our opinion, Gazprom looks slightly more preferable.

Unexpectedly on 2% fell . And this despite the fact that the management of the bank said that they expected a net profit of 295 billion rubles for the year. Taking into account that 50% of it will be used for dividends, the dividend yield of VTB shares exceeds 12%. We expect a bounce of VTB shares, although the dividend stories are not very attractive now because of the huge yield of OFZ, which will only continue to grow with the increase of the key rate of the Central Bank.

Overall, the external backdrop today is not very conducive to stock purchases on a broad front. The U.S. futures are trading just above yesterday's close, and if the U.S. stock market declines today, the Russian stock market will not be able to withstand the negative, and we will have a wave of profit taking as well.

The ruble lost some of Monday's gains yesterday, weakening against the dollar by a third of a percent. Today in the morning trading the dollar-ruble pair is growing by another 0.1%. We expect the Russian currency exchange rate to fluctuate around 73 rubles per dollar during the day.