Rupee turns lower, Australian Dollar on back foot
Wednesday,
19-Jun-2019
12:31 PM (IST)
The Indian rupee turns lower to 69.6950/7050 levels in the afternoon deals on dollar buying in the market and slight weakness in domestic shares. Rupee touched the high of 69.50/51 levels early today helped by positive developments over the U.S.-China trade tensions and dovish comments by the head of the European Central Bank. So far rupee traded in the range of 69.50-69.6950 levels. At 12:08 PM, the S&P BSE Sensex was trading at 39,178 up 132 points, while the broader Nifty50 was at 11,719, up 27 points. As per the technical indicators, range for USDINR pair for the remaining part of the day may be 69.25-69.75 levels. Rupee has an immediate support at 69.72 levels. A breach of the same may see rupee at 69.89 followed by 70.11 and 70.33 levels. On the positive side rupee is likely to face resistance at 69.55 levels and if it is able to break the same then it may gain up to 69.44 levels followed by 69.32 and 69.20 levels. In the forward segment 1mth, 3mth and 6mth annualized premia are currently trading at 5.13%, 4.78% and 4.68% respectively.
Forex today witnessed tight trading ranges in Wednesday’s Asian trading, as a sense of calm prevailed ahead of the key Federal Reserve Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) interest rate decision. Meanwhile, the Asian equity markets cheered the risk-on rally induced by the revived US-China trade optimism and the European Central Bank (ECB) President Draghi’s rate cut talks. Across the fx space, the Yen picked up mild bids on reports that a rocket hit the site of foreign oil firms’ headquarters in Iraq’s Basra. Therefore, the USD/JPY pair ran through offers and turned lower towards the 108.30 region, having consolidated near 108.60 levels in early trades. The JPY bulls remained unaffected by the decline in the Japanese exports’ growth. The Aussie remained on the back foot near 0.6875 region, despite risk-on and higher iron-ore prices, as dovish RBA minutes and latest trade-related headlines overshadowed. The Kiwi was better bid above the 0.65 handle after New Zealand’s (NZ) current account deficit narrowed, but the gains were capped ahead of the Fed and NZ Q1 GDP report. Meanwhile, the European currencies, the EUR/USD pair and the Cable traded flat, awaiting fresh incentives from the key UK data and political updates while the dust settled over the dovish Draghi aftermath. The Turkish Lira emerged the biggest loser on the US President Trump’s sanctions threat. On the commodities space, Gold prices on Comex kept its range near 1250 levels amid pre-Fed caution trading while both crude benchmarks failed to benefit from the Iraq explosion news and traded almost unchanged on the day.
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