MOSCOW: The Russian rouble opened little changed on Thursday before a G20 summit in Japan, where investors expect progress toward ending the trade war between China and the United States.
At 0747 GMT, the rouble was up 0.1% against the dollar at 63.00 and 0.1% versus the euro at 71.62 .
China and the United States have agreed to a tentative truce in their trade dispute, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported on Thursday, citing sources, before U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping meet on Saturday.
The trade war has sent shockwaves across emerging markets, driving their equities and currencies down.
The rouble outperformed its peers, reaching a 10-month high last week after the U.S. Federal Reserve signalled it was ready to cut interest rates. This week, hopes for a U.S. rate cut faded after St. Louis Fed President James Bullard downplayed the need for rates to fall next month.
The Russian currency has now also lost support from month-end tax payments that were made earlier this week. Those taxes usually prompt export-focused companies to convert their foreign currency to meet local duties.
"Much of the rouble's potential for growth is exhausted, but good news from the G20 summit could help the currency," said Andrei Kochetkov, an analyst at Otkritie Brokerage.
Oil prices, which usually buttress Russian assets, fell on Thursday, reversing some of the previous session's gains as traders await the G20 summit and a meeting of OPEC and other oil producers to decide on output cuts.
Russian stock indexes were up. The dollar-denominated RTS index was up 0.6% to 1,395.2 points and the rouble-based MOEX Russian index was 0.5% higher at 2,790.6 points.
Shares in London-listed Russian consumer lender TCS Group, the parent company of Tinkoff Bank, slid 2.1% below the previous closing level after TCS said it would raise extra capital by offering 18.3 million global depositary receipts.
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