The Indian rupee fell to a record low on Wednesday, hurt by a sharp rise in the dollar and U.S. bond yields as Republican Donald Trump claimed victory in the U.S. presidential election.
The rupee closed at 84.28, down 0.2% from its previous close, in what was its worst single-day fall in over four months.
However, intervention by the Reserve Bank of India helped the currency limit losses compared to its regional peers, which fell as much as 1.8%.
Trump claimed victory in the 2024 presidential contest after Fox News projected that he had defeated Democrat Kamala Harris, although other media outlets had yet to call the race.
The risk now is that the rupee weakens further with its direction being influenced by how much strength the dollar exhibits and how sharply the Chinese yuan depreciates, said Dhiraj Nim, a forex strategist and economist at ANZ.
The dollar index climbed over 1.5% to 104.9, while the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield touched a more than four-month peak before retreating to 4.43%. The offshore Chinese yuan was down 1.1% at 7.18 per dollar.
While the RBI “will smoothen out sudden moves” if the yuan reacts sharply, the central bank would have to let the rupee weaken, Nim said.
The central bank “heavily sold dollars” on Wednesday via state-run banks to cap the rupee’s decline, a senior trader at a state-run bank said.
Trump has vowed to impose a 10% tariff on imports from all countries and 60% duties on Chinese imports, with analysts reckoning that his immigration, taxation, and tariff policies may exert upward pressure on U.S. inflation.
While markets were still confident the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates by 25 basis points on Thursday, odds of a similar-sized rate cut in December slipped to about 68% from nearly 80% a day ago, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
