MUMBAI: The Indian rupee is expected to resume the near-term uptrend despite slight weakness on most Asian peers and higher US Treasury yields.
Non-deliverable forwards indicate the rupee will open at around 82.82-82.84 to the US dollar compared with 82.8625 in the previous session.
The local currency had declined to 82.90 on Wednesday, pressed by a one-off outflow.
With that flow out of the way and considering that the near-term bias is “decisively” on the upside for rupee, expect a move back to sub-82.80 levels (for USD/INR), a currency trader at a bank said.
He reckons that the dollar/rupee pair is a “sell on rallies” till it holds below the 83 handle and expects moves lower to be “quite slow”.
Asian currencies were marginally down on the day, hurt by a further move up in US Treasury yields, on worries that US inflation was proving sticker than expected.
Indian rupee under pressure on anticipated outflow, possible Fed rate cut delay
The 2-year US Treasury yield rose to 4.64% in Asia, the highest in nearly two weeks.
Odds of a Federal Reserve rate cut at the June meeting dropped slightly.
The probability of a cut at next week’s meeting is next to zero and at the May meeting very low.
Following the higher-than-expected US February inflation data, focus turns to the US retail sales data out later in the day to gauge how consumer spending is holding up.
Further, US producer price index and jobless claims data is due Thursday.
The data is out in the lead up to the Fed meeting on March 19-20.
The key risk to watch at the upcoming Fed meeting is whether policymakers revisit their dot plot projection of three rate cuts in 2024 on account of stubborn inflation, Yeap Jun Rong, market strategist at broker IG Asia, said.
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