MOSCOW: Russia saw strong demand for five-year OFZ treasury bonds at an auction on Wednesday, as high yields eclipsed economic gloom.
"At the moment, there is a lot of homeless money in the West seeking to find any income, while Western markets offer lower yields," Danskebank analyst Vladimir Miklashevsky said.
The finance ministry sold 19.16 billion roubles ($619 million) of 7.4 percent OFZ bonds maturing April 2017 out of the 20 billion on offer.
The average rate was 7.53 percent, compared with guidance for an upper boundary of 7.50-7.55 percent announced by the ministry on Tuesday. Demand at the top of the guidance reached 27.01 billion roubles.
Aton analysts said in a note the auction was successful partly because of the OFZ's relatively high liquidity.
Before the auction, analysts had predicted weak interest given an oil-steered weakening in the rouble and a sell-off in the stock market.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.