OREANDA-NEWS. Yesterday, the Russian FX market moved deeper into the red amid decent trading activity. MICEX turnover increased to USD 5.7bn, but export selling flows, such as they were, were dampened by a counter-flow of USDRUB buyers. From the opening, RUB surrendered the 59.00 level, bottoming at 59.85 at noon. A second wave of pressure came late in the evening, when oil finally lost ground, falling as low as USD 53.5/bbl (-2.1%). Hence, RUB weakened to 59.65 against USD, thus losing 1.8% during the day. Meanwhile, trading in the EM FX universe was mixed: ILS outperformed, rising 1.3%, and ZAR bounced 0.4%, while TRY dropped 1.2%, dragged down by the tense situation on the Syrian border. Commodity-based currencies showed remarkable resistance to the fall on the crude market: NOK and NZD rose 0.7%, while AUD corrected down 0.2%. 

Yesterday, banks took the full limit of USD 2.4bn in the 28-day FX repo operations, which almost covered the funds maturing this week. Not taking into account today’s one-week repo auction, the volume of banks’ debt to the regulator is to decline to USD 32.7bn (-USD 64mn).