OREANDA-NEWS. April 23, 2015. Yesterday, the Russian FX market saw choppy trading, balancing between export selling flows and increasing buying flow. In the morning, USDRUB opened with a gap, hiking to 54.10 from 53.40. However, at this level export offers emerged, sending USDRUB back to the opening levels by around midday. In the second half of the session, the export support started to fade, so pressure on RUB resumed, with the slide in crude prices doing its bit to weaken market sentiment. Hence, RUB declined 0.6% against USD to close at 53.70, while Brent corrected down 3.0% to USD 59.3/bbl. Turnover on MICEX amounted to USD 4.2bn.

EM currencies traded mixed yesterday, so the EM FX index firmed only 0.1%. Among the bright spots were MXN and ZAR, which bounced 0.2%, as well as TRY, which rose 0.5%. At the same time, IDR and KRW declined 0.4-0.5% in price. Pressure on the oil market weighed on risk appetite for commodity-based currencies: AUD declined 0.2% and NOK closed flat against USD.

Yesterday, the CBR offered USD 1.0bn at the one-week FX repo auction, but banks secured only USD 291mn at an average rate of 2.26%. So, today banks’ debt to the regulator on FX repo instruments is to decline USD 560mn to USD 34.8bn.