Exporters’ net foreign currency sales go up in May
Major exporters increased foreign currency sales in May from $7 billion to $9.1 billion. Individuals continued to act in a countercyclical manner, that is, they purchased foreign currency when the ruble was appreciating and sold it when the ruble was weakening.
The share of the yuan in the on-exchange and over-the-counter FX markets continued to expand. Accordingly, it is important to accurately assess the cost of yuan liquidity in Russia. The key measure is the difference between a ruble-denominated interest rate (e.g., RUONIA) and the indicative exchange rate for CNY/RUB FX swaps.
The absolute majority of the transactions in the stock market are carried out by the largest companies. However, at the beginning of the year, the percentages of second- and third-line shares in the market were higher than now. Market participants were then demonstrating abnormal activity in relation to some of these securities. Nevertheless, there have been detected no signs of investors’ collusion to push up share prices.
More details are available in the new issue of the Financial Market Risks Review.