Weekly Review: Rupee stretches downward trend for second-straight week

New Delhi: Stretching its downward trend for the second-straight week, the rupee depreciated by a modest 9 paise to end at 64.52 against the US currency in a highly volatile week on the back of renewed dollar demand from importers and banks.

Activity has been fairly lackluster with little in the way of market moving news amid global uneasiness.

The domestic currency largely managed to sidestep early volatility following the MSCI decision to include China A- Shares in its global emerging market index amid capital outflows worries.

Though, a smart rebound in local equities and smooth supply of dollars into equities and debts predominantly weighed on trading sentiments, supporting the rupee from any major deviation.

With the US Federal Reserve's June interest rate decision out of the way, global unwinding of dollar longs also weighed on forex market.

The rupee briefly plunged to a fresh three-week low of 64.67 on Wednesday before reclaiming lost ground.

At the Interbank Foreign Exchange (Forex) market, the local unit resumed a tad higher at 64.42 per dollar from last weekend's close of 64.43 and advanced further to 64.31 on bouts of dollar selling.

Later, it reversed trend and tumbled to hit a fresh low of 64.67 mainly pressurised by strong dollar demand amid buoyant greenback overseas tends.

The home unit, however managed to retrace its early steep losses towards the fag-end trade to end at 64.52, showing a nominal fall of 9 paise, 0.14 percent.

Foreign funds were modest sellers in the local market and sold USD 7.19 mln as per provisional data from stock exchanges.

Meanwhile, country's forex reserves increased by USD 799 million, mainly on account of rise in foreign currency assets (FCAs), to touch a record high of USD 381.955 billion in the week to June 16, RBI said.

In the previous week, the reserves had declined marginally by USD 11.5 million to USD 381.156 billion.

The RBI, meanwhile fixed the reference rate for the USD at Rs 64.5365 and Euro at Rs 72.0808, respectively.

In worldwide trade, the greenback took a big knock against a basket of major currencies on Friday, recording its steepest one-day fall in three weeks on persistent doubts whether the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates again this year due to softening inflation data.

It also broadly weakened versus commodity-linked currencies.

Politics is eclipsed economics in the week after the FOMC hiked the Fed Funds target for the third time since last November's election and signaled its intention to begin reducing the balance sheet "relatively soon," which we take to mean an announcement in September to start in October.

Elsewhere, European data continues to improve, building case for ECB policy normalization.

The dollar index a measure of the US currency against a basket of six trade-weighted peers ended lower at 96.98 after retreating further from a one-month peak reached on Tuesday.