Russia Currency Market Bends But Doesn’t Break: Chart of the Day
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Foreign-exchange desks were in better shape to deal with the ruble’s selloff earlier this week than the last time they faced such a test 16 years ago.
The CHART OF THE DAY shows the difference between bids and offers on ruble-dollar trades peaked two days ago at 0.7825 ruble. While that’s the highest since Russia’s 1998 bond default, it is less than a third of the almost 3 rubles peak is reached then. Thirty-day volatility climbed 45 percentage points since October, to 55 percent, compared with about 200 percent in 1998.