Putin's diplomatic blitz, meetings about sanctions in the government and Urals for $ 95

Xi Jinping, Macron, Scholz, Erdogan: While the United States is waiting for Russia's response, Vladimir Putin meets all the others

In the geopolitical crisis around Ukraine, a new large diplomatic round begins. On Monday, Vladimir Putin, who visited Beijing on Friday, met in Moscow with France President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Sholz and the Foreign Minister of the UK Liz Tracers will fly to Russia after him. Meanwhile, Putin himself is waiting in Turkey Recep Erdogan, who does not despair his meeting with the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky. Experts do not expect that all this diplomatic activity will lead to some breakthroughs, but in a pause in an acute confrontation, the Russian market feels much better than in January.

• At the time of sending this newsletter, VVR, Vladimir Putin with Emmanuel Macron, lasted almost five hours and has not yet ended. Before its start, the French president said that he came to find a joint answer to security issues in Europe, which would avoid war. Today's negotiations can be the beginning of the detachment path, he said.
• On the eve of Macron's trip in Moscow, sources in his environment told reporters that the purpose of the meeting was to try to convince Putin to abandon the buildings of troops on the border with Ukraine, to receive assurances from him in intentions to continue negotiations with the West and warn about the possible consequences of potential invasion. Macron, who will have the presidential election in April, is going to show that his efforts to maintain good relations with Putin have been “paying off” over the past five years, Bloomberg interlocutors said. But both American and Russian experts agreed that the meeting has little prospects - significant agreements can be reached only between Moscow and Washington.
• Nevertheless, Macron is not the only European politician who is going to visit Russia. Already on February 10, the Russian Foreign Minister Liz Tracers can visit Russia, and on February 15, the new German Chancellor Olaf Sholts will meet with Putin in Moscow. Today Scholz is on a visit to the United States, where he meets with President Joe Bayden.
• Vladimir Putin himself spent several hours in Beijing on Friday, where he met with Xi Jinping. Countries published a declaration in which in general words they opposed the expansion of NATO, and signed new agreements on the supply of Russian oil and gas to China. “The main motives of these agreements are in the political plane. In conditions of tension with Western countries, it was extremely important for the Russian authorities to show the development of strategic partnership with China, especially in the energy sector, ”said Marcel Salikhov, director of the economic direction of the Economic and Finance Institute of Energy and Finance.
• The next direction for Vladimir Putin may be Turkey - while the Russian president met with Macron, the representative of Recep Erdogan said that Putin will come to Turkey, and the date of the visit will be named in the coming days. Moreover, in Istanbul it is hoped to organize Putin’s meeting with Zelensky - and the latter already agrees, it follows from the words of the representative of Erdogan.

What am I to me?

In the conditions of a pause in geopolitical exacerbation, the Russian market feels much better than during an exacerbation: the Mosbirzhi index last week without sharp jumps, the net sales of Russian OFZ last week turned out to be recordly low from July last year, and the ruble is traded at 75.5 per dollar - on the upper boundary of the range, which analysts designated as an interval, to which, to which, to which, to which, to which, to which, to which, is to which the interval, to which. The ruble will return if "some dialogue is felt between Russia and NATO by decision of the armed confrontation." But the pause is still only a pause.

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MONEY

Sanctions are stress tests

No one understands how the geopolitical crisis ends, but the government is still preparing for possible anti -Russian sanctions for the invasion of Ukraine. As The Bell found out , last week the First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov held a series of meetings on readiness for the sanctions of the most important sectors of the economy. The meetings were held according to the results of stress tests (“exercises”) of Russian companies and systematically significant banks, the reports of the Russian Post, Aeroflot and Russian Railways have already made reports. Stress tests (“exercises”) suggested checking the stability of state-owned companies in case of disconnecting from SWIFT, a ban on the supply of Western software equipment, servers, chips and other high-tech equipment, The Bell sources say. “Everyone is cheerful, but in private conversations they say a disaster,” one of them said.

Urals at $ 95

Oil prices continue to justify forecasts - Brent barrel confidently entrenched above $ 90 and is not going to get cheaper. And the price of a barrel of the Russian Urals today for the first time since 2014 exceeded $ 95, the industry agency Argus reported. Geopolitical tension is superimposed on the production of OPEC+remaining below the quota in some countries, the agency states. For the Russian budget, which, in 2022, on the basis of the price of $ 44.2 per barrel, all this means an additional increase in oil overpromitations, which in 2021 allowed the Ministry of Finance to purchase currencies for the Federal Tax Service for 3 trillion rubles. And this means that the need of government in borrowing, which are significantly difficult due to geopolitical tension, becomes even lower.

Almost the "unicorn" of Tinkov

The European fintech startup Vivid Money, founded by immigrants from Tinkoff Bank Artem Yamanov and Alexander Emeshev and having TCS Group Oleg Tinkov as the main investor, almost grown to the level of “unicorn”. In the next investment round, the company received an estimate of € 775 million ($ 886 million at the current rate). Among the new investors Vivid Money was Vision Find 2 founders of SoftBank Masayoshi Sona. In 2020, Tinkov promised that the VIIVID Money "will put the ass [founder of Revolut] to Koruhovskoye." Before that, however, far away: the last revolut rating is $ 33 billion.

INVESTMENTS

JP Morgan is not waiting for new risks

The risks faced by the American stock market are already taken into account in price, according to JP Morgan strategist Mislav Mateika. According to his team, neither the Fed nor the ECB will already move further "in the hawk territory." At the same time, inflation reaches its peak, labor market and corporate cash flows strong. The shares still have growth potential, confident in JP Morgan.

BOFA strategists are much more pessimistic. They see alarming signals - the assessments of companies, the mood of the market, fundamental and technical factors that indicate that this year will be poor for the stock market. Investbank believes that optimists miss one important detail. Although in previous cycles of raising the rates of the US promotion they demonstrated positive profitability, this time the Fed will tighten its policy in the ove -accepted market. S&P 500 is now more expensive than in any other cycle, except for 1999–2000, BOFA notes.

PRACTICE

Risky game with the employer

Half of employees in the United States are ready to put pressure on their employers for the growth of salaries, Bloomberg writes with reference to the Harris Poll survey. According to its results, 55% of Americans will look for proposals for working in other companies in order to get an increase at their current place of work, and 61% consider this practice to be ethical. The strategy very often bears fruits - the publication leads several cases. For example, the employee asked for an increase, he was offered an increase by only 10%, he did not agree, found another job - and as a result, in the current place his annual salary was raised from $ 120 thousand to $ 200 thousand. But the trick still does not always work and bears risks, notes Bloomberg. The publication tells the story of a 28-year-old girl who received the offer, resigned from her current work, but could not go to a new place-she was unexpectedly informed that the position was already “closed”.

The problem of excessive qualifications

Employers are different about excessive qualifications (Over-Qualification) of women and men when considering candidates for work, writes Quartz with reference to a study conducted by scientists of the University of California at San Diego and the University of Carnegie-Mellon. They made two sets of resume with stereotypical male and female names, but identical qualifications: in the first set there were candidates suitable for work, in the second - candidates with excessive qualifications. It turned out that the summary of “supercoolled” men deviated more often than the resume of women from the same group. In the case of suitable candidates, preference, on the contrary, was given to men. One of the conclusions is that this is an example of an obvious gender prejudice: a man, in order to get a job, needs to be just qualified, but a woman needs something beyond that.