Thursday, April 6, 2017

Morning INR update: RBI's liquidity problem!

The FOMC minutes showed that the FED is thinking about reducing reinvestments sooner than market thought (by the end of this year itself). This should have resulted in higher US yields and stronger dollar but that was not the case perhaps due to slightly negative equities on account of Trump’s meeting Xi and below expectation print for Services ISM in the US; Nevertheless I cannot rationalize the price action. A break of 2.3% on the lower side in US 10 year yield (weekly close), technically looks like a bearish signal which can take it to around 2% and at the same time create a risk off environment globally.

Today we have the RBI policy wherein the rate decision is a consensus of no action. What would be interesting is how RBI handles the excess liquidity floating in the system. A CRR hike reduces bank profitability and I would think that the government would not want PSU bank profitability to reduce currently (given that most liquidity resides there), which could prevent RBI from hiking CRR substantially (1% CRR hike sucks out 100k crore of liquidity only). Therefore an additional interest paying measure is what I would expect. If the liquidity problem is addressed then RBI will not be forced to pay forwards in case of its interventions from the buy side, perhaps facilitating a lower move in forwards.

USDINR 1m NDF trades 8p left while EM currencies have depreciated on the news of FED balance sheet reduction by the end of this year. Yesterday the markets saw bond inflows of Rs. 5k crores which drove USDINR lower although we saw moderate bids from nationalized banks. Immediately USDINR might face tough resistance near 65.20 levels but at the same time a break of 64.80-70 levels looks more unlikely now. CMP 65.02, Range 65.20-64.95.

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