Rupee on August 20: Here’s how it fared against other currencies

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The Indian rupee against the dollar has ended at 74.39 today. The currency rate differs daily and is updated frequently due to change in economic performance, inflation, interest rate differentials, and capital flows. The rupee on Friday declined by 15 paise to close at 74.39 (provisional) against the US currency. The rupee decline demonstrated a lacklustre trend in the domestic equities and a strengthening of the American currency in the overseas market.

The domestic currency opened lower at 74.38 against the American currency and finally settled at 74.39 at the interbank foreign exchange market.

The local unit touched an intra-day high of 74.38 and a low of 74.47 against the US currency during the session.

The rupee had settled at 74.24 against the US dollar on August 18. The forex market remained closed on August 19 on account of ‘Muharram’.

“Indian rupee marked the biggest weekly loss in six weeks and remained the worst performer among Asian peers in today’s session,” said Dilip Parmar, Research Analyst, HDFC Securities.

Parmar further noted that “heavy buying in the dollar has been seen as risk sentiment deteriorates amid concern that the Delta virus strain could derail the global recovery and the US Federal Reserves may start tapering earlier than expected”.

Markets and oil prices

The dollar index, which gauges the greenback’s strength against a basket of six currencies, was trading 0.09% higher at 93.65.

The global oil benchmark, Brent crude futures, fell 0.59% to $66.06 per barrel.

Indian benchmark equity indices settled lower on Friday led by losses in metal stocks amid a heavy sell-off in global markets. Sensex declined 300 points, or 0.4% to close at 55,329, while Nifty50 ended at 16,451, down 118 points or 0.7%. Both the indices had dropped to intra-day lows of 55,014 and 16,376, respectively.

Foreign institutional investors were net sellers in the capital market on August 18, as they offloaded shares worth Rs 595.32 crore, as per exchange data.

Check the exchange rate of currencies against the Indian rupee