Rupee in range, Yuan fall on Weak Chinese Data
Friday,
14-Dec-2018
12:24 PM (IST)
The Indian rupee is trading range bound and is currently quoted 71.74/75 levels (12:10 pm) in the afternoon deals. Rupee slipped to 71.82/83 levels early today tracking losses in most Asian currencies as regional shares were weighed down by weak Chinese economic data. Local investors await India’s trade deficit data. Overnight gains in crude oil prices also adding pressure. So far rupee traded in the range of 71.70-71.82 levels. Benchmark indices are trading flat with Nifty is below 10,800 levels. As per the technical indicators, range for USDINR pair for the remaining part of the day may be 71.45 -71.95 levels. Rupee has an immediate support at 71.81 levels. A breach of the same may see rupee at 71.88 followed by 71.93 and 71.99 levels. On the positive side rupee is likely to face resistance at 71.69 levels and if it is able to break the same then it may gain up to 71.64 levels followed by 71.57 and 71.51 levels. In the forward segment 1mth, 3mth and 6mth annualized premia are currently trading at 4.06%, 3.92% and 4.03% respectively. WPI inflation fell to 4.64 percent in November 2018, from 5.28 percent in same month last year.
The Yuan fell in Asia after China reported a set of weak data. The USD/CNY pair traded 0.13% higher to 6.8917.The fall in the Yuan came after official data showed growth in retail sales and industrial output in China slowed more than expected in November. Retail sales grew 8.1% year on year, compared with the median forecast of 8.8%. The growth was the weakest pace since 2003, according to Reuters’ records. Growth in industrial output also dipped half a percentage point to notch a year-on-year rise of 5.4%, lower than the 5.9% that markets projected. On the other hand, fixed asset investment grew 5.9% from January to November, marginally higher than the previous expected 5.8%.The People's Bank of China (PBOC) has set the Yuan reference rate at 6.8750 vs. the previous day's fix of 6.8769. Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar index that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies gained 0.1% to 97.118, as investors awaited an expected U.S. interest rate hike next week. The Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates the fourth time this year, but analysts will likely focus more on the policy outlook for 2019, over which there is more uncertainty. Elsewhere, the USD/JPY pair slipped 0.1% to 113.50.The AUD/USD pair and the NZD/USD pair was down 0.4% and 0.8% respectively.
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