OREANDA-NEWS. Volatility on the Russian FX market persisted yesterday, while RUB continued to trade a little bit asynchronously with oil.

MICEX turnover remained elevated, totalling USD 6.1bn yesterday, with the market using every USDRUB dip for buying, dampening support from the oil side.

In the first half of the day Brent was hovering near the previous day’s close, not giving RUB any reason to weaken. Nevertheless, right from the opening USDRUB started moving north, peaking at 67.68 in the middle of the session. With the opening of the US markets, Brent gained momentum, touching USD 52.4/bbl, but failed to consolidate there and rolled back to USD 50.7/bbl (+0.4%).

However, oil’s spike above USD 52/bbl managed to bring RUB into the black only for a while. Having scratched 66.17, RUB rather quickly returned to the opening levels, sliding by the end of the session to 67.20. After the bell, RUB sharply moved to 66.46 against USD, closing technically 0.7% stronger, but this morning USDRUB is quoted above USD 67.00 again. At the same time, RUB closed 0.7% in the black against EUR, as EUR fell to 1.113 in the aftermath of Mario Draghi’s comments regarding a possible extension of the QE programme.