February brought profits to investors in the Russian fuel and energy complex
The day of the start of the special operation in Ukraine, February 24, was the worst for the Russian stock market in the history of its existence. At the moment, key indices were losing more than 40%, almost all domestic securities sank, the ruble fell in value almost two times against . As a result, trading on the leading Russian stock exchanges was temporarily suspended until the situation normalized.
The Western sanctions largely affected the Russian banking sector: in particular, the largest financial institutions with state participation - "" and , which caused sales of their securities. "However, considering the support from the Central Bank, we expect that the announced sanctions will not lead to a loss of stability in the Russian banking sector, although they will certainly have a negative impact on the business of creditors. In such a situation, it is very likely that banks will decide to refrain from paying dividends for some period," commented Igor Dodonov, an analyst at Finam Group. In addition to shares of state-owned banks, the most unprofitable shares for users of the "Diagnostics" service in February included securities of AK "", "" and "".
Despite the worsening market conditions, operations with shares of some companies brought profit to the users of the service in the last winter month. Thus, investors were able to earn on transactions with securities of Inter RAO, Raspadskaya, Izhstal and Rosseti. However, none of these issuers made it into the rating of the most popular among investors.
As expected, the top most traded securities in February were Sberbank, VTB, and . However, this list is practically unchanged for many months.
As for the US stock market, in February investors preferred deals with high-tech companies, having placed their bets on the securities of the electric cars manufacturer, the Russian US-listed online recruiting company HeadHunter, the microchips manufacturers and the shares of . However, investors made money on shares of other IT-giants: the top five most profitable stocks included those of Alibaba, Alphabet, and the aircraft maker.