Ruble strengthens on first day of trading
2023.01.09 07:04
Ruble strengthens on first day of trading
By Ray Johnson
Budrigannews.com – After falling to six-month lows during volatile trading at the end of 2022, the Russian rouble rose by more than 3% against the US dollar on the first full trading day of the new year.
The rouble was trading at 69.68 GMT on Monday, up 3.4%, having crossed the 70 mark against the US dollar. The currency also traded at 10.23 in Moscow, up 1.9 percent against the euro and 2.2% against the.
The Russian rouble lost 17 percent in December as a result of Western actions to impose a price cap and an EU embargo on Russian oil exports, after spending much of the previous year as the currency with the best performance worldwide.
Alor Broker analysts wrote in a research note on Monday, “Before New Year there was clearly a tendency to reduce exposure to stocks and a rush to the dollar.”
They added, “There should be a reversal of those trends in the coming days, if the geopolitical background does not interfere… major exporters should start selling foreign exchange earnings accumulated over the holidays and investors should start selling-down dollars bought for protection.”
During the extended start-of-the-year holidays in the first week of January, Russian markets saw record low trading volumes, in part because Western institutional investors left the Russian markets last year.
The large corporations that control Russia’s foreign exchange markets and the retail investors who are increasingly driving the stock market away from their desks saw little change in the rouble and stocks amid the low liquidity.
More Dollar weakened in focus of Fed and China
Russian stocks rose in tandem with the rouble on Monday. The currency effect was largely to blame for the 3.9% increase in the RTS index to 979.1 points, while the rouble-based MOEX Russian index gained 0.4 percent to 2,164.6 points.
