OREANDA-NEWS. Picking up where they left off last Friday, investors drove Russian stocks higher on October 29 in response to record high oil above $93/bbl and stronger foreign equity markets, Alfa Bank's analysts report. The RTS Index closed up 1.4% to a new peak at 2,226, the RTS-2 Index added 1.0% to 2,370, and the MICEX Index gained 1.0% to 1,872. Unsurprisingly, the oil & gas sector saw the bulk of the buying, with Tatneft (+5.3%), Gazprom (+3.0%), LUKoil (+2.7%) and Surgutneftegaz (+2.2%) all bid higher. Norilsk Nickel added 0.4%, even though the prices of copper (-0.3%) and nickel (+0.6%) were off slightly during Monday’s (October 29) trade on LME.

Corporate earnings reports affected the share price movements of two of Russia’s major state-led companies. Sberbank declined 1.2% as investors reacted to the company’s 1H07 IFRS results, though the experts keep their target price and BUY rating unchanged. Transneft's prefered shares jumped 4.6% after the publication of much better than expected IFRS numbers for 2Q07. The surge of global interest in potash pushed Uralkali up another 6.1%, prompting to raise the target price but lowering a recommendation to HOLD, while Silvinit lost 4.1% on the threat posed by a sinkhole to that company’s railway. For now, the analysts have placed their rating and target price for Silvinit UNDER REVIEW. Elsewhere, NLMK jumped 8.1%, MTS locals rose 3.4% (ADR +0.4%) and VSMPO gained 3.3%. UES (-0.2%) again found itself on the outside looking in, while Severstal (-0.4%) failed to advance on the day. CTC Media rocketed 19.2% in ADR trade after the release of much better than expected US GAAP results for 3Q07. VimpelCom also had a very strong session on NYSE, up 5.6%, while Wimm-Bill-Dann gained 4.0%. Profits were taken from Golden Telecom (-4.9%) after the stock’s very strong rise in recent weeks.