The rupee closed at 83.9525 against the U.S. dollar, marginally lower than its close at 83.9225 in the previous session.
The currency hovered in a tight band between 83.9375 and 83.9650 during the day.
Traders pointed to intermittent dollar sales from state-run banks that helped keep the rupee above its all-time low of 83.9725 hit earlier in the month.
While the dollar offers were “most likely” on behalf of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), it’s “hard to be sure”, since they were not aggressive, a foreign exchange trader at a mid-sized foreign bank said. The RBI is likely “making its presence felt” via the intermittent offers instead of intervening to push the rupee higher, the trader added. Most Asian currencies were down by 0.1% to 0.7% and the dollar index rose 0.1% to 101.2 after falling to its weakest level since December on Wednesday. The dollar and U.S. bond yields were pegged back by downward revisions to U.S. payrolls and after the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s July meeting signalled that the central bank was on track to cut rates in September.
“We see no reason to call for an inversion of the dollar bear trend for now,” ING Bank said in a note.
Dollar-rupee forward premiums rose after the data solidified hopes of Fed rate cuts, with the 1-year implied yield touching a 15-month peak of 2.11% before edging lower.
Attention now turns to U.S. jobless claims data due later in the day and the remarks from Fed Chair Jerome Powell, due on Friday. (Reporting by Jaspreet Kalra; Editing by Janane Venkatraman )
