Rupee trades higher at 67.45 against US dollar.

Mumbai: The Indian rupee on Friday strengthened for the third consecutive session against the US dollar, tracking the gains in its Asian peers.

The local currency opened at 67.48 a dollar. At 9.10am, the home currency was trading at 67.45, up 0.10% from its previous close of 67.53.

Asian currencies were trading higher. Malaysian ringgit was up 1.08%, South Korean won 0.42%, Philippines peso 0.32%, Indonesian rupiah 0.3%, Japanese yen 0.28%, Taiwan dollar 0.24%, Singapore dollar 0.11% and Thai baht 0.05%.

India’s benchmark Sensex index rose 0.13% or 34.87 points to 26,964.85. So far this year, Sensex is up 3.2%.

India’s deficit in the first two months of the current fiscal was Rs.2.28 trillion or 42.9% of budget estimates for 2016-17, higher than the year-ago period. The fiscal deficit situation during April-May of the last fiscal was 37.5% of the budget estimates.

The Nikkei/Markit Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) data for the month of June will be out at 10.30am. The manufacturing PMI was at 50.7 in May.

So far this year, the rupee is down 2%, while foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have bought $2.74 billion in equity and sold $1.85 billion in debt markets.

Meanwhile, India’s 10-year bond yield was trading at 7.438%, compared with Thursday’s close of 7.45%.

The dollar index, which measures the US currency’s strength against major currencies, was trading at 95.869, down 0.28% from its previous close of 96.143.

Asian markets opened higher on the first day of the new quarter, tracking global stocks. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 was up 0.77%, while across the Korean Strait, the Kospi was higher by 0.79%.

Overnight, US stocks closed higher on the last day of the quarter, in their third straight day of recovery from post-Brexit sell-off. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 1.33% at 17,929.99 points, the S&P 500 index was up 1.36% at 2,098.86 points and the Nasdaq Composite was up 1.33% at 4,842.67 points.

Source : livemint.com​