The dollar at a unified trading session on the Moscow Inter-Bank Currency Exchange (MICEX) for tomorrow settlement dropped by 0.15 kopecks - down to 29.2307 roubles per dollar.
The correctional movement of the dollar down has been going on for the third straight day. The pretext for active sales was the rouble squeeze created by considerable demand for the American currency at the end of August. Dealers say that dollars were bought in anticipation that the Central Bank at the beginning of September will increase its purchases of the American currency on the exchange.
But the market never lived to see the regulator's forex interventions, and the dollar/rouble rate began, against this background, to be adjusted downwards - with players closing the earlier opened long positions. The correctional lowering also continued on Friday.
Nevertheless the rouble shortage is gradually reducing, and traders admit that starting next week the Central Bank will resume its play on the market.
Testifying to an improvement in rouble liquidity is some reduction in interbank rouble rates from 8 per cent to 6 per cent per annum, while the balances of bank assets in correspondent accounts in the Central Bank have breached the psychological mark of 200 billion roubles, rising in comparison with Thursday by 7.6 billion to 203.5 billion roubles.
The UTS on the dollar for today and tomorrow settlement opened on Friday with the following quotes: 29.226-29.227 and 29.225-29.228 roubles per dollar. By 1:30 p.m. quotes for today settlement slipped to 29.2075-29.21 roubles per dollar, and for settlement for tomorrow to 29.2151-29.2175 per dollar.
Tragic developments in Moscow and Beslan failed to impact directly on the Russian financial market - the forex rate was formed under the influence of earlier circumstances and causes. But this is only a formal assessment.
Behind the movement of the dollar, euro and other currencies are ordinary people. And, as dealers point out, during tense developments in North Ossetia and a televised reporting of events around the Beslan school, market attention was riveted to live air transmission, rather than to exchange terminals.
