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

REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

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

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.

Notably, data released Monday showed that Russian CPI rose by 5.0% year-over-year in January, compared to 5.4% in the prior month. On a month-over-month basis, CPI rose by 0.6% in January, compared to the prior month's 0.4%.

"Accordingly, despite the recent hawkish rhetoric of the central bank, we still see significant monetary easing this year," argued William Jackson, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics. "We expect the one-week repo rate to end this year at 8.25% (down from 10.0% now) and next year at 6.00%."

REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

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

• The euro is down by 0.5% at 1.0732 against the dollar. German factory orders rose by 5.2% month-over-month in December, far above expectations of 0.5%, and above the prior month's drop of 3.6%. Moreover, eurozone PMI came in at 50.1, compared to the previous reading of 50.4.
• The British pound is little changed at 1.2479 against the dollar. Separately, an Ipsos Mori poll of senior executives at more than 100 of the top 500 companies in the UK found that 58% of businesses believe they are starting to feel the impact of the UK's decision to leave the European Union.
• The Japanese yen is up by 0.4% at 112.24 per dollar.
• The US dollar index is little changed at 100.00. 

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