The ruble hits a 19-month high after a hawkish statement by Russia's central bank

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February 6, 2017 1:19 PM

The Russian ruble has climbed to its best level in 19 months.

Central Bank of Russia governor Elvira Nabiullina.

The petrocurrency is up by 0.5% at 58.6917 per dollar as of 7:42 a.m. ET. It is around levels previously seen in July 2015.

Meanwhile, Brent crude, the international benchmark, is little changed at $56.85 per barrel.

The Central Bank of Russia kept rates on hold at 10.00% last Friday and added that it saw less room for rate cuts going forward amid rising inflation risks.

"Despite improving global commodities backdrop, the CBR broadly stuck to its hawkish rhetoric," wrote Citi Research's Ivan Tchakarov and Ekaterina Vlasova in a note to clients. "[T]he menu of risks that the CBR had outlined earlier have hardly changed and the CBR re-confirmed its concerns about inertia in Inflation expectations, emerging signs of recovery in real wages, and uncertainty in global economic backdrop."

"In our view, the subtle dovish hue we detected in the CBR’s previous policy statement in Dec has now been overrun by budding concerns about MinFin’s policy to accumulate FX reserves in the Reserve Fund," they added.

As for the rest of the world, here's the scoreboard as of 8:00 a.m. ET:

euro
drop
British pound
n
Japanese yen
US dollar index

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