OREANDA-NEWS. Yesterday, the Russian FX market continued to trade in lull mode, with MICEX turnover remaining as low as USD 2.7bn. In the first half of the session, nothing lit up the radars, with USDRUB hovering near 57.00. In the evening, RUB attempted to break through the 56.7 level, but the momentum was not strong enough, and it rolled back to close at 56.93 against USD. In the meantime, the BASKET slipped 0.4% during the day due to EUR’s bounce to 1.094.

Brent recovered to USD 56.1/bbl (+0.8%), which provided support to commodity-based currencies: AUD increased 0.7%, while NOK and NZD added 1.5% and 0.9%, respectively. The EM universe also returned into the black, with the EM FX index growing 0.5%. In particular, TRY rebounded 0.5%, ZAR jumped 0.9%, BRL and ILS rose 0.8%. At the same time, KRW came under pressure, falling 0.5% against USD. Separately, the FX repo auction was cancelled, as no bids were placed for the offered USD 100mn.