Indian stocks decline, rupee depreciates in early trade

MUMBAI: Indian stocks traded largely steady this morning with a downside bias in line with global benchmark US markets.

At the time of writing this report, Sensex traded at 61,932.20 points, down 48.52 points or 0.078 per cent, whereas Nifty traded at 18,385.10 points, down 24.55 points or 0.13 per cent.

Mild profit booking after the rally too weighed on the domestic indices today.

Among the Nifty 50 companies, Hindalco, Titan, Tata Motors, Tata Steel, and Grasim were the top five losers, while L&T, Hero Motocorp, Tata Consumers, Cipla, and ICICI Bank were the top five gainers, National Stock Exchange data showed.

Meanwhile, the rupee too depreciated this morning. It opened at 81.64 against the US dollar versus Wednesday’s close of 81.30.

Even after today’s depreciation, the rupee has relatively strengthened in most of the recent sessions against the global benchmark dollar as the US dollar index has weakened substantially. The weakening of the US dollar is a positive for other currencies.

Barring the latest appreciation in November, the Indian rupee had been, however, weakening over the past several weeks to hit fresh new all-time lows.

In October, the rupee breached the 83 mark for the first time in its history. So far this year, the rupee has depreciated around 8-9 per cent.