Rupee slips below 67-mark vs USD as Fed policy outcome looms

Mumbai, Sep 20 (PTI) The rupee turned weaker after twostraight days of gains and ended below the psychologically key67-mark in a nervous trading session today amid uncertaintyover the Fed rate-hike action. It lost a modest five paise to settle at 67.01 againstthe American currency. Sentiment across the globe was relatively muted andtraded cautiously ahead of highly-anticipated monetary policydecisions by the Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan. Most emerging Asian currencies too remained wary. Both the major central banks are scheduled to announcetheir respective monetary policy decision on Wednesday. The domestic unit resumed modestly lower at 66.98 fromMonday’s closing value of 66.96 at the Interbank ForeignExchange (forex) market on fresh demand for the Americancurrency from importers as well as sluggish equities. It largely traded in a tight range of 66.94 and 67.07throughout the day given traders’ hesitancy to take any riskahead of the major central banks meetings before finallyending at 67.01, showing a small loss of 5 paise, or 0.07 percent. The US dollar traded broadly lower against its majortrading counterparts amid highly cautious with investorspreferring the sidelines until a clearer US monetary pictureemerges. The greenback, gauged by the US DollarIndex, was up 0.06per cent at 95.85. The RBI fixed the reference rate for the dollar at67.0200 and euro at 74.8814. In cross-currency trades, the rupee rose sharply againstthe pound sterling to close at 86.84 from 87.38, while fellback against the euro to end at 74.88 as compared to 74.76yesterday. It also moved down further against the Japanese yen andfinished a tad lower at 65.76 from 65.74 per 100 yens earlier.(MORE) PTI EDM BPDMKJ