For Monday, October 26, the National Bank set the following official rates:
- US dollar – 45.2021 UAH ( +0.1511 UAH to the official rate for Friday, October 23);
- euro – 50.5766 UAH ( +0.1416 UAH to the official rate for Friday, October 23).
The rates were set at 15:30 on October 23 and reflect the following trends:
1. Immediately after the start of trading on the interbank foreign exchange market, cashless dollar quotes surged upward, despite active interventions by the National Bank, and by 12:00 reached 45.19 UAH on the bid side, setting a new historic high. The average deal price at 12:00 was 45.1604 UAH – 11 kopecks higher than on Thursday. Such a sharp rise scared buyers, who rushed to place new orders and were ready to buy at any price without haggling. After 14:00, the rise in quotes accelerated. Shortly before the close of day trading, the cashless dollar reached 45.41 UAH on the bid side (once again rewriting the historic high), and the most expensive deal of Friday was executed at 45.43 UAH. Logically, by the close of trading the average price had risen even more, so the NBU raised the official dollar rate for Monday by 15.1 kopecks.
Treasurers are bewildered: the numbers seen on the Bloomberg trading screen caused slight confusion among them. After all, the rise in one trading session was almost 1%. Conspiracy theorists ask: "Could such a sharp drop in the hryvnia on Friday be related to the searches at the NBU head's office a couple of days ago?"
2. The euro on the international FOREX market resumed its decline on Friday and from the level of 1.12266 dollars fell to 1.11847 dollars. At the time of fixing, the euro was sold at 1.1189 dollars – 6.1 points lower than on Thursday (1.11951 dollars). Therefore, in parallel with the increase in the official dollar rate, the NBU raised the official euro rate for Monday by 14.1 kopecks.
