By Nimesh Vora<\/p>\n
MUMBAI, Feb 16 (Reuters) – The Indian rupee on Monday is expected to draw support from a broadly struggling dollar and anticipated Reserve \u200cBank of India intervention, while weak domestic equities and patchy flows are \u200clikely to weigh.<\/p>\n
The 1-month non-deliverable forward indicated the rupee will open largely unchanged from 90.6350 on \u200bFriday.<\/p>\n
After rallying on the U.S.-India trade deal, which took the rupee to 90 per dollar from an all-time low of near 92, the currency has since come back under pressure.<\/p>\n
Persistent dollar demand from importers at lower dollar\/rupee levels for hedging, erratic equity \u200cflows and what bankers have \u2060said are one-time dollar payments have combined to keep the rupee under strain.<\/p>\n
The RBI stepped in aggressively last week, surprising bankers, \u2060to alleviate headwinds from flows and curb potential speculative positioning.<\/p>\n
Most bankers said the intervention was likely aimed at signalling a preferred zone for the currency, indicating that the RBI \u200bdoes not \u200bwant the rupee to slip past the \u200b91 level at this stage.<\/p>\n
“Unless \u200cequity flows stabilise, dips (on dollar\/rupee) are likely to be bought into,” a currency trader at a mid-sized private sector bank said.<\/p>\n
“The bias is for a slow move higher rather than a breakdown, which is quite evident from price action.”<\/p>\n
While equity flows turned more supportive of the rupee in the immediate aftermath of the U.S.-India \u200ctrade deal, they have remained largely erratic.<\/p>\n
Foreign investors \u200bsold more than $800 million worth of Indian shares \u200bon Friday, according to preliminary data, \u200bunderscoring the fragility of sentiment. Domestic equities fell about 1% \u200con the day.<\/p>\n
DOLLAR, U.S. YIELDS<\/p>\n
The dollar \u200bindex dipped slightly on \u200bFriday, extending its weekly decline after softer-than-expected U.S. inflation data strengthened expectations that the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates later this year.<\/p>\n
Moves were more \u200bpronounced in U.S. Treasuries, \u200cwhere the two-year yield fell to its lowest level since 2022, a \u200bdevelopment that does not bode well for the dollar, analysts say.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Nimesh Vora; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Nimesh Vora MUMBAI, Feb 16 (Reuters) – The Indian rupee on Monday is expected to draw support…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,149045,149043,149044,85,7529,46,21274],"class_list":{"0":"post-293534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-currency-trader","10":"tag-domestic-equities","11":"tag-equity-flows","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-indian-rupee","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-reserve-bank-of-india"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}