Oil continues to slide with the US WTI futures trading at around 10-11 US dollars per barrel. Brent has settled below 20 US dollars.
The ruble is likely to continue its decline. It was reported that on April 20 the Central Bank of Russia sold the amount of currency worth 19 billion rubles. Obviously, thanks to these interventions, the ruble has been holding steady so far. It's good to open short positions on the ruble now.
The situation with coronavirus in Russia has stabilized over the past three days with +5236 new confirmed cases and 58 thousand cases in total.
The number of new cases is below +6000, which was seen three days ago. In St. Petersburg, despite the acceleration of growth, the number of cases fell below + 10% per day. A turning point will be a decrease below + 7% cases per day.
It seems that the lockdown restrictions have had the positive effect as the epidemic is slowing down. This gives time for medical workers to elaborate the treatment and apply the method of blood transfusion from those who recovered to seriously ill patients.
Take care!
