China's yuan slipped against the dollar on Tuesday after the central bank set its official midpoint at a three-month low, suggesting it is not yet ready to release the recent pressure on the yuan, traders said. Traders said there were signs companies have become less aggressive in betting on the yuan's appreciation.
"The PBOC appears to be happy with a pause of the sharp yuan depreciation, possibly believing the market has learned a lesson," said a trader at a Chinese commercial bank in Shanghai.
"While we can never be certain of the PBOC's intention, the yuan's movements so far this week appears to hint that the central bank may let the yuan move around 6.15 for now."
On the day, dollar purchases by state banks - a sign the People's Bank of China is intervening in trading - appeared to have subsided, traders said.
Spot yuan stood at 6.1499 per dollar at midday, down 0.06 percent from Monday's close after the PBOC fixed the yuan's midpoint at 6.1190, down 0.08 percent from the previous day. It also marked the official base rate's weakest level since Dec. 5, 2013. Traders said the yuan's daily limit of 1 percent in either direction of the PBOC's base rate implied that spot yuan had little room to move far away from its recent low of 6.1808, its nearly one-year trough hit last Friday.
But they said the near-term trend remained unclear because the central bank could change its stance at any time.
"Judging from Tuesday's midpoint, we can safely say the PBOC has no intention to let the yuan depreciate much in the near term," said a trader at a European bank in Shanghai. "But if the PBOC lets the midpoint weaken beyond 6.13 or even more, the market should be vigilant that the central bank may be engineering another round of yuan depreciation."
The PBOC surprised global markets since last month when it began engineering a sharp decline in the yuan.
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