MUMBAI: The Indian rupee on Monday strengthened for the fourth consecutive session against the US dollar from its previous close. The local equity markets opened higher for the third consecutive sessions.
At 9.10am, the home currency was trading at 64.74, up 0.12%, from its previous close of 64.82. The local unit opened at 64.77 per US dollar and touched a high of 64.73.
The benchmark Sensex index rose 0.46%, or 124.60 points, to 27,339.20.
Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought Rs.2,740 crore of bonds on 15 October, Rs.714 crore on 14 October and Rs.4,170 crore of bonds on 13 October. FIIs bought Rs.5,799.33 crore in debt on 12 October, according to the National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL).
The yield on India’s 10-year benchmark bond was trading at 7.563% compared with its Friday’s close of 7.565%. Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions.
Since the beginning of this year, the rupee has lost 2.6%, while FIIs have bought $4.08 billion from local equity and $8.48 billion from bond markets.
Most Asian currencies were trading mixed. Malaysian ringgit was down 0.63%, Taiwan dollar 0.18%, Thai baht, China renmibi were down 0.1% each. However, South Korean won was up 0.68%, Indonesian rupiah and Singapore dollar were up 0.1% each.
The dollar index, which measures the US currency’s strength against major currencies, was trading at 94.644, up 0.11%, from its previous close of 94.54.
China’s gross domestic product (GDP) rose 6.9% in the three months through September from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday, beating economists’ estimates for 6.8%. Still, that was the slowest quarterly expansion since the first three months of 2009, based off previously announced data.
