Little activity in the Baltic markets, signs of life in Russia

Last week activity on the Baltic securities markets was light due to holidays in Estonia and Latvia.
The Riga Stock Exchange was open for just two days last week, while the Tallinn Exchange was open for trading three days; it was business as usual for the week in Vilnius.
There were no surprises during the short week, with market indexes continuing to decline in all three countries.
Only Estonia showed moderate trading activity with almost $800,000 in average daily turnover, compared with less than $20,000 daily turnover on the Riga Stock Exchange. Including direct deals, average daily turnover was approximately $300,000 on the Vilnius bourse, but less than $50,000 of this was traded on the central market.
In comparison to the falling Baltic markets, the Russian stock market continued to climb, with the RTSI posting a 1.5 percent gain for the week.
Russian share prices have more than doubled over the first half of the year. In Tallinn share prices are up approximately 20 percent while the indexes in Riga and Vilnius are down approximately 10 percent.

Estonia
Hansapank was the focus of attention during last week's three days of trading on the Tallinn bourse, with deals in the bank's shares accounting for more than 60 percent of the exchange's total turnover.
The TALSE index closed at 110.37, down by 0.81 percent from the previous Friday.
Hansapank dropped 2.19 percent during the week to end at 71.40 kroons ($4.80). A large investor has been busy unloading their position, brokers said, with no matching interest on the buy side.

Latvia: Traders take another vacation
With just two working days last week due to the midsummer festivities, trading on the Riga Stock Exchange slowed to a trickle.
Turnover for the two trading days totaled 21,000 lats ($35,593) and both bourse indexes slipped, with not even one share posting a gain. The DJRSE lost 1.99 percent to 83.54 points and the RICI was down 1.76 percent at 164.90 points.
Most experts are skeptical about turnover picking up in the near future, with expectations for a rise in trading activity, and hopefully share prices, coming only in the second half of July after companies begin announcing their half-year results.
An exception may be Ventspils Nafta shares, as information received late Friday indicated that the construction of the rival Baltic Pipeline System has been put on hold.
Interest in other shares remains low. Brokers are not confident that the Latvian Privatization Agency will be able to sell a package of shares in the pharmaceutical company Grindex at a discount of 20 percent below their current bourse price.

Lithuania
Last week trading continued to be slow on the Lithuanian National Stock Exchange, with investor interest limited to shares in Rokiskio Suris, Vilniaus Bankas and Lietuvos Energija.
The Litin index fell 1.97 percent to 513.81 points, the Litin-A by 0.14 percent to 1,035.52 and the Litin-10 shed 2.19 percent to 991.27 points.
"There was no activity or news that would have shaken up the market," said VB Vilfima broker Kestutis Kvainauskas.
Total turnover on the bourse more than doubled last week to 51.67 million litas ($12,917,500), but 87 percent of it was in government T-bills. Central market turnover was just 1.02 million litas.
Of official list shares, trading was more active in Rokiskio Suris and Vilniaus Bankas shares.
"Shares in Vilniaus Bankas and Rokiskio Suris are the most popular on the bourse," said Kvainauskas, and they should continue to generate the most trading activity.
Rokiskio Suris' shares picked up 3.36 percent to 20.28 litas on a central market turnover of 252,200 litas. Another 428,200 litas in trades were conducted in direct deals.

Russia
The Russian stock market slipped slightly on Friday after a strong performance earlier in the week, but brokers said equities would continue their steady week-on-week rally.
The main RTS index closed at 123.06, up 1.6 percent after closing at 121.12 on June 18.
"For the week we're closing about two points higher, however we're closing about eight points below this week's high," said Dmitry Kryukov of MFK Renaissance.
Among blue-chip stocks, Rostelekom and oil company Surgutneftegaz were the biggest losers, dropping 3.8 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively. Oil giant LUKoil saw a 2.4 percent-fall followed by fuel company Mosenergo and utility United Energy Systems, with drops of 2.2 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively.
In any case, traders were upbeat about the market, saying the week-on-week rally should continue.