MOSCOW: The Russian rouble fell back on Thursday after strengthening in the previous two days, suggesting little confidence that the latest bounce in the price of oil, the country's main export, will last.
At 0745 GMT, the rouble was 0.4 percent weaker against the dollar at 67.84 and had lost 0.4 percent to 77.33 versus the euro.
The rouble had risen 1 percent on Wednesday, lagging behind the oil price which rebounded after weekly U.S. government data showed a surprisingly large fall in crude inventories.
On Thursday Brent crude oil, a global benchmark, was up 0.1 percent at $39.9 per barrel, having risen above $40 per barrel in early trading.
A forex dealer at a large Western bank in Moscow said he believed a large player was betting against the rouble by holding a long foreign currency position, "evidently, because of expectations that oil will fall back down again".
Forex Club analyst Alena Afanasieva said in a note that the positive impact of the U.S. crude inventories data was likely to be temporary, predicting that both Brent and the rouble would fall back on Thursday because of weak oil demand globally.
Russian share indexes were little changed.
The dollar-denominated RTS index was up at 0.1 percent to 864 points, while the rouble-based MICEX was flat at 1,864 points.
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