The Indian rupee headed back toward near-decade highs on Wednesday with sentiment boosted by a surging stock market, but dollar purchases by oil refiners and suspected central bank intervention blocked its path.
The partially convertible rupee ended at 39.305/315 per dollar on Wednesday, rising smartly from the previous close of 39.42/43, and climbing towards last week's peak of 39.16 - its highest since March 1998.
"The market jumped up in the morning, and then traded in quite a narrow range for the rest of the day, with a lot of exporters selling dollars that were mopped up by the central bank," said the chief dealer with a private bank.
US stocks were partly helped by comments from the chief executive of the Goldman Sachs Group that the investment bank would not face big credit losses stemming from the US subprime market crisis.
The Reserve Bank of India was widely seen resisting rupee appreciation around 39.30. Data released on Tuesday showed the central bank bought a record $11.87 billion in intervention in September to slow the rupee's rise.
Comments
Comments are closed.