USDINR futures closed at 74.71 for the day, almost 32p lower, despite dollar index holding up well. If private flow is the main reason for today's left side move in USDINR, overarching narrative for today can construed as capital flows.
Let's see if this narrative (flows) can play out on Thursday as well, in the background when dollar index is still holding up well around 93 levels and US 10Yr bond quoting below 1.20.
At least to me, from risk perspective, a falling bond yield and rising dollar index are definitely not a good sign.
The main saving points for INR is softer crude and stable EM currencies.
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Want to understand what makes #USDINR interesting from an individual #option trader perspective.
Let's try to understand this in this thread. USDINR has both weekly and monthly options contract which are fairly liquid. Today was weekly expiry.
Weekly options expire every Friday at 12:30 pm and monthly options at 2 days prior to last working day of the month. Margin applicable in USDINR is normally between 2.5% to 3% depending upon volatility.
Margin for one lot of USDINR #straddle (74.50 July 30 expiry - weekly contract) is roughly Rs. 2600/2700 and premium received is around 35p, which on one lot comes to Rs. 350 ($1000*0.35).
Sometimes, regulatory changes have asymmetric impact on different products within same eco-system. Peak margin seems to be one, having salutary effect on currency volume on Indian exchanges.
Currency volumes on Indian exchanges (NSE + BSE) seem to be gaining momentum this year, after an almost flat volume growth over the last 3 years. Until June end, ADV is up by almost 31%.
But what is interesting to note is increasing option share in total volume.
Since Dec'20, when peak margin got introduced, option share in total volume (futures+option) is slowly inching up, thanks to increasing interest in weekly options contract + possible peak margin effect.
Capital flows is one of the major indicators to look at, for INR movement. Higher the inflows, better it is for INR and vice versa.
But along with inflows, it is also important to see the quality and stickiness of flows.
Since India is a net importer country, meaning imports more than export, (thanks to large share of oil in import basket), it needs to meet its shortfall through capital flows.
A country gets the flows mainly through 3 sources:
Since currency is a pair trading - trading of currency of one country vs other (USD vs INR), there are two ways to look at a currency pair strength or weakness.
For example - in USDINR, when we say INR is strengthening, it can happen on account of two things - dollar weakness or INR own intrinsic strength.
When I say, INR intrinsic strength, it basically means strength on account of domestic factors, like economic (GDP) growth, positive real rates (inflation lower than policy rates) or improving trade balance (exports doing better import) etc.