At today's trading, the price of North Sea Brent oil dropped to $110 per barrel for the first time since July last year. Falling demand has raised concerns about the state of the economy USA and China. In this situation, ruble assets in the stock market and ruble assets in the foreign exchange market suffered.

Today, the price of North Sea Brent oil on the spot market, according to Reuters , has come close to $110 per barrel for the first time since July last year. Russian Urals oil fell below the $110 mark, the price of which reached $99.2, which is 1.1% lower than the previous day’s close. A confident decline in oil prices continues for the second month in a row, during which time various types of oil fell by 16–17%, and in the last two weeks alone the decline was 7–8.3%.

The achievement of oil prices at multi-month lows was provoked by weak macroeconomic statistics from the two largest importers of raw materials - the USA and China. Today, the National Bureau of Statistics of China announced the country's economic growth rate. According to the bureau, the country's economy grew 7.7% in the first quarter, 0.2 percentage points (pp) below the growth rate at the beginning of 2012 and 0.3 pp below official forecasts. “China's performance has a strong impact on an already weakened commodity market. It continues its downward trend as China is not performing as expected,” Jonathan Barratt, CEO of the analytics firm BarrattBulletin, told Reuters.

Signs of a slowing US economy do not add optimism to investors. Retail sales fell 0.4% in March, the biggest drop since June 2012, according to the Commerce Department. Analysts predicted that the indicator would remain unchanged. In such conditions, the US consumer confidence index fell by 72.3 points in April compared to 78.6 points a month earlier, according to preliminary data from the University of Michigan. This is the lowest level since July 2012. “I think oil prices haven’t bottomed out yet. I've always been an optimist, but the US performance has been disappointing lately and China's weak performance is concerning. Competition among oil sellers has increased significantly: in addition to OPEC, Russia is seeking to sell more oil,” said Carl Larry, president of Oil Outlooks and Opinion.

Declining oil prices had a negative impact on the Russian stock market. By 15:30 Moscow time, leading Russian indices fell by 2–3%. As a result, the RTS index fell below the level of 1,400 points for the first time since November last year - to 1,364.19 points; the MICEX index dropped to 1,358.8 points. At the same time, leading European indices showed a decrease of within 1%. The declining demand for ruble assets was reflected in the foreign exchange market. By 15:33 Moscow time, at trading on the Moscow Exchange, the dollar exchange rate for tomorrow delivery rose by 28 kopecks, to 31.365 rubles. for a dollar. The euro exchange rate after a week's break rose above the level of 41 rubles - to 41.03 rubles/€, which is 37 kopecks. above Friday's close. The cost of the bi-currency basket rose to 35.39 rubles, which is 33 kopecks. higher than the previous day's close.

Vitaly Gaidaev

Oil fell in price without demand