There is no certainty that the Russian stock market has bottomed out
One can also talk about some improvement in the political background. Despite renewed threats of sanctions, this time intent on depriving Russia of access to high technology, it is positive that the United States has stated that it has no intention to send troops to Ukraine. Nor does NATO intend to deploy its forces to Ukraine. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky believes that the risks of a Russian attack on Ukraine are greatly exaggerated.
Thus, we can expect that the acute phase of Western pressure on Russia is coming to an end.
On this background the Russian stock market yesterday managed to rise a little bit, but today it does not want to continue to rise yet. However, the situation may change at any moment, the volatility of movement of quotations of both separate securities and stock indices has sharply increased during the last days. It speaks about the fact that strong demand for shares starts to appear.
And yet it is still very dangerous to make new medium-term purchases. There is no certainty that the market has bottomed out.
Apart from politics, ruble assets are strongly influenced by the situation on the U.S. stock exchanges. So far, there is an impression that the world stock market is forming a medium-term downtrend.
A lot for further dynamics of stock assets will depend on today's decision of the US Federal Reserve and the subsequent speech of its head. If the regulator gives a hint to strengthen the pace of tightening of monetary policy, stock markets will face a wave of strong decline, and ruble assets, despite their oversold condition, will not be left aside.
Therefore, we recommend investors to maintain a wait-and-see attitude for the time being.
Despite the decision of the Bank of Russia to temporarily stop buying currency as part of the budget rule and the tax period, continues to show the intention to approach the mark of 80 rubles per dollar. Apparently, with the acute phase of the stock market decline over, speculators are trying to rock the currency market. The ruble also started to enter it, received from the sale of shares and OFZs.
And here the situation will largely depend on the reaction of markets to the Fed's decision.