rupee
Indian rupee opened marginally higher at 72.81 per dollar on Thursday against previous close of 72.84, amid buying seen in the domestic equity market.
On February 10, rupee ended with marginal gains at 72.84 per dollar against Tuesday’s close of 72.88.
At 10:05 IST, the Sensex was up 144.84 points or 0.28% at 51,454.23, and the Nifty was up 44.90 points or 0.30% at 15,151.40.
“The USDINR spot is trading within the tight range of 72.75-73.15. Currently, the market is flat and volatility is muted. The upbeat sentiments on account of optimism about a global recovery and inflows into local stocks will help Indian Rupee to appreciate, but likely RBI intervention at around 72.80-75.75 zone may limit the fall in USDINR pair. So we will expect USDINR spot to continue to trade sideways with bearish bias in between 72.75-73.20 zone,” said Rahul Gupta, Head of Research- Currency, Emkay Global Financial Services.
“The 72.75 mark is acting as a strong support and break of which could push prices towards 72.50. However, on upside 73.05-73.20 will continue to act as a strong resistance levels,” he added.
Oil prices fell on Thursday, giving up some of the recent strong gains, although losses were curbed by production cuts and hopes that rollouts of vaccines will drive a recovery in demand.
The dollar was pinned near two-week lows on Thursday, as softer-than-expected U.S. inflation and another Federal Reserve promise to keep interest rates low reinforced expectations of meagre returns from the reserve currency.
The USDINR future finally slipped below 73 levels on closing basis, which will keep the rupee pair depressed. We feel upsides could be limited due to sharp sell-off in the Dollar index and rise in Euro and GBP, said ICICI direct.
The dollar-rupee February contract on the NSE was at | 72.93 in the last session. The open interest increased by 0.5% for the February series, it added.
Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) net bought shares worth Rs 1,786.97 crore, whereas domestic institutional investors (DIIs) net sold shares worth Rs 2,075.68 crore in the Indian equity market on February 10, as per provisional data available on the NSE.
“USDINR in the same range of 72.75/73.00 and all others are selling, while RBI is buying. Yesterday in futures is closed around 72.80 but RBI is just not allowing the downside to be breached and on upticks there are large number of sellers, so it is not able to breach 73.00 levels, ” said Anil Kumar Bhansali, Head- Treasury, Finrex Treasury Advisors.
“Best is to receive the premium and sit tight on the position else daily carry goes. Importers to just hedge their very near term and exporters to keep selling the upticks which is rare these days. Range 72.75-73.00,” he added.
Gold edged lower on Thursday as the dollar recovered and softer US inflation data dampened the bullion’s appeal as a hedge against inflation.
