Tag Archives: prediction USD INR

Finance, Forex, SGD INR

SGD INR: Post the Election Euphoria

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Time flies and it’s already June – I can’t believe that the last I wrote about INR was in February and whole world was speculating on the outcome of the Indian elections. I did not expect the BJP to win with a full majority given the polarisation of votes, combined with regional politics and was expecting a hung parliament. 

Based on that I had predicted that the Rupee would fall back to the 63 mark against the USD and 50 against the SGD (SGD INR: A storm in making). However, to my delight, the BJP did get a full majority. This meant that the uncertainty of a hung parliament and issues cropping up from coalition government were instantly non issues.

The markets reacted favorably to a government formed by progressive and reform oriented leaders and pushed the Indian Sensex to all time highs of over 25,000 and Rupee appreciated quite quickly to the Rs.58 mark against the USD. With many a Indians residing in foreign countries who remit money to India the obvious question was – Is the rupee headed to 55 against USD and should I transfer money to India now?

My answer to many such questions was – “the fundamentals of the economy don’t change overnight just with a stable government and the real effect of policy changes would take months to materialise and I still expect Rupee to stay over the 60 mark against the USD”

One of the first places to start when looking at fundamentals is Implied Exchange Rate calculation. Over the past years the spot rate has tended towards the Implied Rate Line (chart below: using SGD INR)

SGD INR 2014

and the calculation suggests that the SGD INR would move back towards the upward trending implied exchange rate line as the RBI is going to hold the interest rates steady – the inflation is still alarmingly high.

Other factors that would be playing against the Indian Rupee would be:

1. Crop losses due to el Nino weather changes

2. Increase in price of crude if the tensions in Iraq escalate

3. Global slow down in the background Ukraine crisis and escalation in South China sea

As I write the Indian rupee has already crossed the 60 mark against the USD and 48 against the SGD and I maintain that the INR would move towards the 63 and 50 mark against the USD and SGD in coming months.

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Forex, Remittances

SGD INR: A storm in making

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It’s a new year and right about time to do a pulse check on INR for the coming year. The past few months I was very busy at work and with the currency being relatively stable I did not want to write something just for the sake of writing. As mentioned in the October post the currency stabilised in the last quarter of 2013 and stayed well within the 60-65 range against the US dollar and hovered around the 49 mark against the SGD (INR – Directionless in 4th Quarter)

One would have expected things to remain calm for a few more weeks in 2014 before the Indian Budget and upcoming elections in March and May respectively but the global markets had something else in mind.

The Federal Reserve started the much-anticipated tapering of Quantitative Easing (QE) in December, with reducing the Bond purchases by 10 Billion USD a month to 75 Billion and followed it by a reduction of another 10 Billion in January 2014 which spooked the emerging markets.

Turkish Lira and Hungarian Forint were aggressively sold off and the Argentinian Peso is unofficially devalued. The data from China is not exactly exciting and Indonesian Rupiah and Thai Baht have their own set of problems to deal with. At the same time the RBI came out and surprisingly increased the benchmark rates in January announcements which I thing was more of a pre-emptive move to shore up defences against any potential sell off in the Rupee. With such weakness in the other Emerging market currencies the Indian Rupee, I must say, held ground very well.

But this is just the start of the year and there are quite a few events lined up in the coming months that would determine which way the Rupee moves. On the global macro side the course of Global Financial Markets a.k.a. the pace of QE would drive the general sentiments towards emerging markets. On the domestic front The Indian Budget announcements and the general elections would be the key determinants.

Looking at the global front I do not expect the federal reserve to stop tapering and ultimately end the QE program unless there is definitive bad news on the US unemployment and inflation. This reduction in QE would be Rupee negative and as in May – Aug 2013 time frame has the potential to push the Rupee down.

On the domestic front anything short of a stable government with full majority would be a negative for the markets. I think that this stage there is no one clear party that I could say would achieve the majority.

So in the short-medium term of next 3-4 months the chips are stacked against the rupee and I do expect it to touch trade towards the 65-67 mark.

What that does to SGD INR? Well the SGD has slightly weakened against the USD and has been trading at 1.27-1.28 area. Deteriorating global fundamentals tend to result in strengthening SGD as a safe haven currency. So with the expected weakness in the Rupee and potential appreciation of the SGD, SGD INR could march back to the 53 mark in the coming months.

Finance, Forex, SGD INR

INR – Directionless in 4th Quarter

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The US debt and budget talks finally reached a resolution yesterday, the congress passed the bill and the much feared US default was averted and the financial markets breathed a sigh of relief. Interestingly the Indian Rupee has been pretty flat both pre and post the US saga.

The drop to 69 against the USD on 28 August was the low point for the Rupee and it steadily regained lost ground in September (Rupee Doing a Bungee Jump – Time to bounce back?) and hovers around 61 as I write.

I often ask myself what has really changed in the past month but can’t find a fundamental reason for the pull back. My take is that it was a technical pull back with Rupee being oversold. Yes one could say that RBI got a new Governor in Raghuram Rajan and that helped Rupees cause, but if changing governors could help the Rupee strengthen by 15% then maybe RBI should abandon monetary policies and use governors to set the direction of the currency :).

Looking at the fundamentals nothing really has changed in the past 2 months – RBI did come up with a FCNR scheme, increase the duty on import of Gold and television sets and a benchmark rate increase. The FCNR scheme is reported to attract 10 billion USD in deposits which would add no more than 3% to the foreign currency reserves. The increase in duty on gold has got the premium over spot soaring in indian markets and made gold smuggling attractive and the increase in duty on television sets has made travel to Thailand and Singapore less attractive – believe it or not bringing in television sets from overseas trips was a great way of subsidizing foreign travel.

On the policy front nothing really has changed in India and no progress is expected until after the next elections in 2014. On the global front there is still a lot of uncertainty and the fear of Quantitative Easing (QE) taper is still there. The general consensus is for no taper before late march 2014 but its an event that will happen sooner or later.

With all the uncertainty and political wrangling I expect the Rupee to remain directionless to the year-end.

63 should act as the pivot against the USD with a variation of 5% either side – a range of 60-65 would be the order. However against the SGD things should be slightly different with 50 acting as a strong magnet.

Economics, Finance, Forex, Remittances

USD INR Carry – have you thought about it?

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Forex trading and carry trade go hand in hand. A few years back it was USD against JPY, then the turn came for AUD against USD and recently people have been talking about EUR against USD on the prospects of US interests remaining low and Euro zone increasing rates to reign in inflation.

The key in all scenarios being large interest rate differentials that allow cheap borrowing in one currency and invetsing in the other. The usual trend is that the currency with the higher interest yield slowly gains against the lower interest rate currency.

AUD-USD moved from lows of 0.80 to 1.05 range gaining whopping 25%, the theme was similar for USD-JPY or EUR-USD.

The Reserve Bank of India has gradually raised interest rates to 7.5% from lows of 3.5% over past 2 years and US still is at lows of below 0.5%. USD INR on the other hand has fluctuated between 44 – 47 in the same time with the

Now given that the interest rate differential is 7% and how other currencies have gained with the carry trade there is no reason why something similar would not happen with USD – INR. Indian Rupee should be strengthening against USD in line with how other currencies have performed.

Yes INR is a currency of a developing country and uses USD to pay for the Oil that it imports but that still does not completely negate the interest rate differential.

Using a simple calculation 1USD invested in India @ Rs.45 would grow to Rs48.37 in one year and seeing the trend of USD-INR fluctuating in a close 3% range there is every reason to enter the USD-INR carry trade.

What does this mean in layman terms?

1. It makes sense to borrow in US and invest in India

2. If you are earning in USD and do not have any need to hold US dollars its beneficial to remit to India and invest

3. If you want to trade then a USD INR carry looks like a low risk trade