Russian Banks sell almost $1.8bn at UTS

After the first hour and a half of trade at today's special session on tomorrow deals, the weighted average dollar exchange rate amounted to 28.77 RUR/USD. As such, the official dollar exchange rate for November 5 has lost RUR0.01. Amid an enormous trade volume that reached $1.771bn at the UTS as of 11:30 a.m., the spread on dollar deals amounted to only RUR0.01. As reported earlier, the trade volume was $95m at this time yesterday. At present, commercial banks are selling dollars due to the dollar's considerable drop on the world market. As a result, the present supply of dollars after the first 90 minutes of trade is the highest since the beginning of dollar trade on MICEX. Today, the Russian Central Bank is participating in the MICEX currency trade and is buying dollars at 28.765 RUR/USD on tomorrow deals, an expert told RBC TV. According to him, the results of the US presidential election affected today's trade indirectly. In particular, the euro has increased to $1.28, thus putting additional pressure on the dollar. The expert believes, that the situation on the domestic currency market will depend on the international market because this is the only factor of uncertainty that can cause the Central Bank to change its level of dollar support.