With all eyes on Russia over the next month as the Sochi Winter Olympics ramps up, we are sure having the market's attention on a collapsing currency is not what Putin had in mind before he dropped $50 billion to make it snow. While the Ruble remains just above record lows against the USD, Bloomberg reports that it has dropped to a record low against the central bank's dollar-euro basket [4]. Russia's finance minister proclaimed today (Erdogan style?) that Bank Rossii should not raise rates (which has been unchanged at 5.5% for the last 15 months). Russian CDS is widening (193bps at 4 month highs) but not cratering like other EM currencies but MICEX (stocks) have had their longest losing streak since April.
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As Bloomberg adds,
The ruble depreciated 1.2 percent to 40.9632 versus the central bank’s dollar-euro basket by 6:01 p.m. in Moscow. A weaker ruble encourages Russians to withdraw and convert local- currency deposits, Sberbank’s main source of funding, while hurting retailers by making imports more expensive in ruble-denominated prices.
“Investors are scared of the ruble devaluation,” Sergey Vakhrameev, an analyst in Moscow at AnkorInvest LLC, which manages about $30 million in assets, said by phone. “During strong devaluations, stock markets fall, investors become scared of indexes in countries where the devaluation isn’t controlled.”
Of course, this will only make the bank run problems worse...