Local sovereign debt: buyers are back

OREANDA-NEWS. Yesterday’s session was a little bit more active. In the morning the market opened mixed, with the belly firming 0.1pp and the long end slipping 0.1pp in price. Later, RUB’s move to 65.90 added some red colour to the market quotes, but bonds soon regained ground, returning into the black by the close. As a result, the long end tightened 2-5bp in yield, the belly yields tightened 2-4bp, declining to 11.15-11.20%. The spread between mid-term OFZs and RUONIA moved into positive territory for the first time since December 2014, and potentially the market might see some support from locals here. The latter have already been visible in the market, as in the morning the sellers were mostly internationals, while the bid was local based. Yesterday, the Ministry of Finance announced two auctions, offering RUB 5bn in floater RFLB 20 and RUB 5bn in bullet RFLB 19 6.70. Given the rather modest volumes of recent placements, we expect good demand.