Forex traders said the rupee is likely to remain under pressure unless there is a softening in the dollar index or a slowdown in foreign fund outflows. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

Declining for the fourth straight session, the rupee dropped 2 paise to hit a new lifetime low of 84.39 (provisional) against the U.S. dollar on Monday (November 11, 2024), weighed down by persistent foreign fund outflows and a muted trend in domestic equities.

Forex traders said the rupee is likely to remain under pressure unless there is a softening in the dollar index or a slowdown in foreign fund outflows.

At the interbank foreign exchange, the rupee opened at 84.38 against the U.S. dollar. During the session, the local currency touched a high of 84.37 and a low of 84.39. It finally settled at 84.39 (provisional), registering a loss of 2 paise against its previous close.

On Friday (November 8, 2024), the rupee dropped 5 paise to hit the lowest level of 84.37 against the U.S. dollar, registering a decline for the third straight session.

In the last four sessions, the local unit has lost 30 paise against the greenback.

The USD-INR pair fell to a record low on Monday (November 11, 2024) as the U.S. dollar index strengthened on Donald Trump’s growth agenda optimism. Foreign investors, following an outflow of $11 billion in October, have withdrawn around $1.50 billion from Indian equities in November.

The Reserve Bank’s intervention may support the domestic currency. Moreover, traders look forward to the India and the U.S. CPI inflation data scheduled to be released this week, Praveen Singh — Associate VP, Fundamental Currencies and Commodities, Sharekhan by BNP Paribas, said, adding the domestic currency is expected to trade with a bearish tilt in the near future.

Meanwhile, the dollar index, which gauges the greenback’s strength against a basket of six currencies, was trading 0.29% higher at 105.30.

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, fell 1.04% to $73.10 per barrel in futures trade.

In the domestic equity market, the 30-share BSE Sensex rose 9.83 points, or 0.01%, to close at 79,496.15 points, while Nifty fell 6.90 points, or 0.03%, to settle at 24,141.30 points.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) were net sellers in the capital markets on Friday (November 8, 2024), as they offloaded shares worth ₹3,404.04 crore, according to exchange data.

Meanwhile, India’s forex reserves declined by $2.675 billion to $682.13 billion for the week ended November 1, the RBI said on Friday (November 8, 2024).

In the previous week, the overall reserves had dropped by $3.463 billion to $684.805 billion. At September-end, the reserves had hit an all-time high of $704.885 billion.

Washington:

Opinion polls underestimated the level of Donald Trump’s support for the third US presidential election in a row, predicting a neck-and-neck race with Kamala Harris when in the end the Republican edged the vice president across battleground states. Trump’s win involved surging support in a number of demographics and regions, but experts said pollsters failed to accurately predict races in states where the results differed significantly from the last election in 2020.

“They did fine in battlegrounds, but… they failed to provide the essential information that Trump was surging across the board,” said Michael Bailey, a professor of political science at Georgetown University.

More than 90 percent of US counties voted in higher numbers for the Republican billionaire than they did in 2020, according to The New York Times.

Overall, the polls had predicted razor thin margins in races in the seven battleground states that decide close US elections. As of Wednesday, Trump was projected to win five of those states by between one and three percentage points. 

The former president was well on his way to sweeping all seven states, according to those projections.

“Trump may have been mildly underestimated but I think the polls ended up doing pretty well, collectively — this was not a huge miss,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia. 

“The polls suggested Trump had a decent chance to win, and he won.” 

The pollsters’ performance was under the microscope this year, after two big misses in succession: they had failed to anticipate Trump’s victory in 2016, and had overestimated the margin by which President Joe Biden won against him in 2020.

“Trump was underestimated by about two points this time around” in key states, said Pedro Azevedo, Head of US polling at AtlasIntel.

In Pennsylvania, the latest polling average from RealClearPolitics put the Republican in the lead by 0.4 percentage points. As of Wednesday, he was ahead by two points.

In North Carolina, polls predicted a 1.2-point margin for Trump, and he won by three points over Harris. 

In Wisconsin, the vice president was given a 0.4-point lead, but the projected results showed Trump leading the count by 0.9 points.

The main problem has not changed since Trump’s arrival on the US political scene about a decade ago: a fringe of his electorate refuses to take part in opinion polls, and firms have failed to be able to accurately gauge their impact.

In the most recent polls conducted by The New York Times with Siena College, “white Democrats were 16 percent likelier to respond than white Republicans,” NYT data analyst and polling guru Nate Cohn wrote two days before the election. 

That disparity had grown over the course of the 2024 campaign, he added.

Although pollsters like The New York Times/Siena tried to compensate for these flaws with statistical adjustments, it was clearly not enough.

“It is apparent that polls significantly underestimated Trump’s growth among Hispanic voters,” said Azevedo, pointing to Trump’s larger-than-expected victories in Nevada and Florida.

“This is also the case among white voters,” he said, adding that while most polls expected Harris to “improve her margins” in this demographic, Trump outperformed the polling and ran up his numbers in rural areas.

Iowa was a prime example of this, with a poll three days before Election Day giving Harris a three-point victory in the solidly Republican state. In the end, Trump won it comfortably by 13 points, Azevedo said. 

J. Ann Selzer, the author of that inaccurate Iowa poll, said the difference could have been made by late-deciding voters.

“The late deciders could have opted for Trump in the final days of the campaign after interviewing was complete,” she told the Des Moines Register newspaper.

“The people who had already voted but opted not to tell our interviewers for whom they voted could have given Trump an edge.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

At the interbank foreign exchange, the rupee opened at an all-time low of 84.23 against the greenback, registering a fall of 14 paise over its previous close. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

The rupee fell 14 paise to an all-time low of 84.23 against the U.S. dollar in early trade on Wednesday (November 6, 2024), dragged down by persistent foreign fund outflows and the strength of the American currency in the overseas market.

Forex traders said with the U.S. election underway, markets are already showing signs of volatility — a trend likely to calm once a clear winner emerges in this tightly contested race.

Also Read: U.S. Elections 2024 results update November 6, 2024

Moreover, the U.S. Fed is expected to announce a rate cut in a meeting scheduled later this week, with further easing of up to 100 basis points projected for 2025.

At the interbank foreign exchange, the rupee opened at an all-time low of 84.23 against the greenback, registering a fall of 14 paise over its previous close.

On Tuesday (November 5, 2024), the rupee settled 2 paise higher at 84.09 against the U.S. dollar.

Meanwhile, the dollar index, which gauges the greenback’s strength against a basket of six currencies, was trading 1.64% higher at 105.11.

“The dollar index rose after Trump went up in the U.S. election initial results and was also leading in the Senate and House,” said Anil Kumar Bhansali, Head of Treasury and Executive Director at Finrex Treasury Advisors LLP.

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, fell 0.98% to $74.79 per barrel in futures trade.

“All will depend on RBI as to where it will allow the rupee to open and how it will move depending on intra-day election results. Wide range for rupee would be 84.00 to 84.35,” Bhansali said.

On the domestic equity market front, Sensex advanced 390.93 points, or 0.49%, to 79,867.56 points. The Nifty jumped 135.60 points, or 0.56%, to 24,348.90 points.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were net sellers in the capital markets on Tuesday (November 5, 2024), as they offloaded shares worth Rs 2,569.41 crore, according to exchange data.