On January 26-27, the ruble strengthened against the euro by RUR 0.83. The euro’s rise on Wednesday is due to the weakening of the dollar against the European currency on international markets. The euro is currently trading at $1.2600, having traded at $1.2450 a day earlier. So, the American currency has lost more than 1 percent of its value against the euro over the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, the ruble has strengthened against the dollar. The weighted average exchange rate of the US dollar with “tomorrow” clearings dropped RUR 0.02 to 28.49 RUR/USD at the Unified Trading Session as of 11:30 Moscow time on Wednesday.

Dealers point to the significant trading volume, which amounted to more than $1.2bn in the first hour and a half of trading. Partly, heavy dollar sales were due to the raising of the long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating on Russia by Standard & Poor’s. There was also another factor – the accumulation of dollar assets by banks over the past few days, analysts say.

According to dealers, banks sold an insignificant amount of dollars at the end of last week and the beginning of this week because of a deficit of dollars on the market. But the situation has changed, and banks have no problems with foreign currency liquidity now. As a result, the trading volume on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange is very likely to set a new record. Traders say the Central Bank is buying all foreign currency offered for sale at 28.4850 RUR/USD, and all deals were made at this rate as of 11:30 Moscow time.