VTB Capital Forex has announced that it resumed retail trading on the foreign exchange (forex) market from Friday for all of its clients. However, it is still not allowing trading with any of the ruble pairs.
Announced on Friday morning, the broker is allowing clients to trade with 22 currency pairs, except for rubles. The minimum trade volume has been set at 0.01 lots, while the maximum allowed open position is capped at 10 lots.
Impact of the Sanctions
VTB Forex is one of the four regulated Russian forex dealers. It is a part of Russia’s second-largest lender VTB Bank, which has been heavily sanctioned by western governments. The European Union even imposed a SWIFT ban on VTB, along with six other Russian banks in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The forex broker temporarily suspended all of its services on 25 February, citing the implications of the anti-Russian sanctions. Its operations were hampered as it receives supplier quotations from VTB Bank.
However, the Russian broker assured that it would resume the services after developing a procedure for eliminating or minimizing the negative consequences of anti-Russian sanctions measures, along with VTB Bank.
But, the business of VTB Capital Forex seems to have endured a massive dent because of its ties with VTB Bank. Other forex broker-dealers in the country suspended ruble pairs initially as the local currency dropped by more than 60 percent against the US dollar, but continued to offer trading with other currency pairs. Alfa forex, another Russian forex broker, even resumed trading activities with ruble pairs with increased margin requirements .
Meanwhile, the Central Bank of Russia has temporarily suspended the sale of retail forex and limited the withdrawal from foreign exchange accounts to up to $10,000.
