July 19 (Bloomberg) -- The ruble weakened the most against the dollar this month, declining for the first day in six, as oil, Russia’s chief export earner, slid. Russia’s currency depreciated as much as 0.7 percent against the greenback, the biggest intraday dip since June 29. It closed down 0.5 percent at 30.5475 per dollar in Moscow, the first daily drop since July 9. The yield on Russia’s benchmark dollar bonds due 2015 rose 6 basis points to 4.094 percent. Crude for August delivery slumped as much as 0.7 percent to $75.50 in New York and was at $75.80 a barrel at the end of official ruble trading in Moscow. The contract slipped 0.8 percent on July 16, after the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary consumer sentiment index for July slid to its lowest level since August, missing economists’ estimates. Investors increased bets that the ruble will weaken further, with non-deliverable forwards showing the currency little changed at 30.7138 per dollar in three months compared with an NDF of 30.7115 on July 16. The contracts are a guide to expectations of currency movements as they allow foreign investors and companies to fix the exchange rate at a particular level in the future. The ruble slipped 0.1 percent to 39.5350 per euro, leaving it at 34.5919 against the central bank’s target currency basket, which is used to manage swings that hurt Russian exporters. The basket is calculated by multiplying the dollar’s rate to the ruble by 0.55, the euro to ruble rate by 0.45, then adding them together. The ruble remains within the 26 to 41 band the central bank pledged January 2009 to defend. --Editors: Linda Shen, Alexander Nicholson. To contact the reporter on this story: Denis Maternovsky in Moscow at dmaternovsky@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gavin Serkin at gserkin@bloomberg.net

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