MUMBAI, March 14 (Reuters) – The Indian rupee is
expected to resume the near-term uptrend despite slight weakness
on most Asian peers and higher U.S. Treasury yields.
Non-deliverable forwards indicate the rupee will
open at around 82.82-82.84 to the U.S. dollar compared with
82.8625 in the previous session. The local currency had declined
to 82.90 on Wednesday, pressed by a one-off outflow.
With that flow out of the way and considering that the
near-term bias is “decisively” on the upside for rupee, expect a
move back to sub-82.80 levels (for USD/INR), a currency trader
at a bank said.
He reckons that the dollar/rupee pair is a “sell on rallies”
till it holds below the 83 handle and expects moves lower to be
“quite slow”.
Asian currencies were marginally down on the day, hurt by a
further move up in U.S. Treasury yields, on worries that U.S.
inflation was proving sticker than expected. The 2-year U.S.
Treasury yield rose to 4.64% in Asia, the highest in nearly two
weeks.
Odds of a Federal Reserve rate cut at the June meeting
dropped slightly. The probability of a cut at next week’s
meeting is next to zero and at the May meeting very low.
Following the higher-than-expected U.S. February inflation
data, focus turns to the U.S. retail sales data out later in the
day to gauge how consumer spending is holding up. Further, U.S.
producer price index and jobless claims data is due Thursday.
The data is out in the lead up to the Fed meeting on March
19-20.
The key risk to watch at the upcoming Fed meeting is whether
policymakers revisit their dot plot projection of three rate
cuts in 2024 on account of stubborn inflation, Yeap Jun Rong,
market strategist at broker IG Asia, said.
KEY INDICATORS:
** One-month non-deliverable rupee forward at 82.89
** Dollar index up at 102.82
** Brent crude futures up 0.1% at $84.1 per barrel
** Ten-year U.S. note yield at 4.1950%
** As per NSDL data, foreign investors sold a net $14 mln worth
of Indian shares on Mar. 12
** NSDL data shows foreign investors bought a net $299.4 mln
worth of Indian bonds on Mar. 12
(Reporting by Nimesh Vora; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala)
