Our comments and expectations
External backdrop. The S&P 500 rose 0.7%, beginning a rebound after the correction wave. A positive trigger for the tech sector was Nvidia’s report, and the company’s shares jumped 8.7%. At the same time, almost the entire rest of the U.S. market remained in the red. The yield on 10-year government bonds rose for a second consecutive session and reached 4.68%. Oil advanced amid signs that diplomatic efforts to reach an agreement on the Strait of Hormuz have run into obstacles. The Trump administration told mediators it is not interested in returning to the terms of the memorandum of understanding with Iran. This morning, sentiment in Asia is again moderate. Oil is trading at $87.4 per barrel, while S&P 500 index futures are neutral ahead of Warsh’s speech in Jackson Hole.
KASE Index. KASE rose 0.7% yesterday, closed above the 8,100-point resistance level, and set a new all-time high. At the same time, trading volumes increased to 1.87 billion tenge, reaching the highest level since July 14. The market is now showing one of its best features of long-term growth: after a prolonged upward wave, the index does not go into a full correction, but takes a brief pause to build strength for the next phase of growth.
Index stocks. The biggest gainers in the index yesterday were KazTransOil shares. There was no major news during the day; however, the company announced that it will hold an Issuer Day online on September 2. From a technical perspective, the move looks solid and takes the shares out of the sideways trend that has persisted since the dividend gap in early June. A local target can be set around 1,240 tenge, which corresponds to the level before the record date for the dividend payment. Halyk Bank shares rose 1.6%. Here we would note that the stock is recovering faster than we expected after the dividend cut-off, and we now anticipate a quicker return to the 400-tenge level despite the mixed Q2 report. On AIX, Solidcore shares jumped 3.2%. On the LSE, Kazatomprom GDRs rose 4.7% at once, which is what we had expected earlier, as the local uranium producer’s quotes had begun to lag noticeably behind other global sector peers over the past week. Uranium did not extend its rise yesterday and remained around $90 per pound. Following yesterday’s move, Kazatomprom’s quotes reached the highs of May this year. A positive sector development was the report that the U.S. Army plans to invest $2.2 billion in providing military bases with small nuclear reactors. Meanwhile, Kaspi shares saw a situation we had warned about earlier: quotes bounced downward after approaching resistance levels and starting to show overbought conditions on the RSI. It is now important for the ADS not to move into a full correction, since with prices near the upper boundary of the ascending channel, the room for decline remains quite wide.
Currency. The dollar rose yesterday to almost 465 tenge — the level we previously identified as a local target. This morning, USDKZT quotes touched 466 tenge, but then retreated to 463.4 tenge. Recall that a stronger dollar supports gains in exporters’ shares.
En