Rupee higher, Australian Dollar lower

Wednesday,   15-May-2019   12:20 PM (IST)

The Indian rupee is trading higher at 70.1975/2075 levels (12:15 pm) in the afternoon deals helped by a rebound in Asian equities following U.S. President Donald Trump’s optimistic comments on U.S.-China trade. Foreign banks are currently on offer. The slight easing of risk aversion is prompting traders to bid up the rupee. However, the rupee may struggle from making much inroads from current levels on account of worries on oil. Benchmark indices are trading higher. At 12:08 PM, the S&P BSE Sensex was trading at 37,490 up 171 points, while the broader Nifty50 was at 11,266, up 44 points. As per the technical indicators, range for USDINR pair for the remaining part of the day may be 69.90-70.50 levels. Rupee has an immediate support at 70.30 levels. A breach of the same may see rupee at 70.42 followed by 70.50 and 70.58 levels. On the positive side rupee is likely to face resistance at 70.17 levels and if it is able to break the same then it may gain up to 70.05 levels followed by 69.89 and 69.72 levels. In the forward segment 1mth, 3mth and 6mth annualized premia are currently trading at 4.46%, 4.29% and 4.21% respectively.

Despite moderate risk-on action in the Asian equities and US equity futures, disappointing macro releases from Australia as well as from China dampened the sentiment around the Antipodeans and capped the bounce in the USD/JPY pair at the key resistance near 109.70 levels. The AUD/USD pair dropped further to fresh 4.5 month lows of 0.6923 while the Kiwi hit fresh weekly lows near 0.6560. The resource—linked Loonie remained trapped in a narrow range near 1.3465 region, unfazed by weaker oil prices. Meanwhile, gold prices traded modestly flat around the 1295 level amid upbeat comments from the US President Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi on trade. Amongst the European currencies, the EUR/USD pair kept minor bids above the 1.12 handle while the Cable recovered above the 1.2900 level amid the renewed Brexit optimism.