Rupee undermined by weak risk, soft dollar supports
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The Indian rupee is expected to open little changed on Thursday, amid losses in Asian shares and U.S. equity futures and a pause in the dollar's upward momentum.
The 1-month non-deliverable forward indicated that the rupee will open largely unchanged from 84.0775 per U.S. dollar in the previous session, when it hit an all-time low of 84.09.
The local currency has been in a very narrow range so far this week, just like last week. The Reserve Bank of India's insistence on not allowing the currency to depreciate from the current level has meant volatility has completely disappeared.
The rupee's last 10 days daily annualised realized volatility has plummeted to less than 0.5%, despite significant foreign equity outflows, uncertainty about the U.S. presidential elections and U.S. Treasury yields making multi-month highs.
The USD/INR pair is "almost behaving like a currency peg", said Srinivas Puni, managing director at QuantArt Market Solutions.
"Today's (U.S.) PCE and tomorrow's jobs report may create some movement", though probably not meaningful enough to cause concern.
The two reports will be scrutinized to gauge the pace at which the Federal Reserve is likely to cut borrowing costs.
However, the importance of the data for Asia FX pales in significance to the U.S. elections on Nov. 5.
A win for Donald Trump next week is likely to lead to a rally in the dollar index, lift U.S. Treasury yields and undermine Asian currencies.
The possibility of a Trump win has lifted the dollar this month, although it took a bit of a breather over the past two sessions.
Asian shares, meanwhile, were down on the day while U.S. equity futures extended losses.
KEY INDICATORS:
** One-month non-deliverable rupee forward at 84.18; onshore one-month forward premium at 9.5 paisa
** Dollar index at 104.16
** Brent crude futures up 0.5% at $72.9 per barrel
** Ten-year U.S. note yield at 4.29%
** As per NSDL data, foreign investors sold a net $106.2 mln worth of Indian shares on Oct. 29
** NSDL data shows foreign investors bought a net $7.4 mln worth of Indian bonds on Oct. 29
