Rupee falls 11 paise at 79.56 against US dollar

Mumbai: The Indian rupee ended 11 paise lower on Thursday to close at 79.56 against the US dollar.

At the interbank foreign exchange market, rupee ended at 79.56, as against 79.45 close on the previous trading session against the US dollar.

“Rupee opening was flat near 79.53 and gained positive momentum in the early part of the session as capital markets witnessed positive momentum after weak opening giving strength to the Rupee. Strong selling in Crude helped majorly to Rupee as crude prices dipped below $95 in Brent witnessing 3rd of major selling in oil, Rupee found resistance near 79.25 zones as Dollar index positive moves above$109 kept bears active on Rupee,” said Jateen Trivedi, VP, Research Analyst at LKP Securities.

Dollar index, which gauges the the strength of greenback against the basket of six major currencies were at 109.037.

Brent crude oil prices were at $93.64 a barrel by the closing of Indian market hours.

Meanwhile, Sensex ended 770.48 points or 1.29 per cent down at 58,766.59, and Nifty closed 216.50 points or 1.22 per cent lower at 17,542.80. Nearly, 1,952 shares have advanced, 1,473 shares have declined and 153 shares remained unchanged.

Reliance Industries, TCS, Sun Pharma, Tech Mahindra, Hindustan Unilever and Infosys were among the major losers on the Sensex.

BSE LargeCap index fell 1.16 per cent, however, BSE MidCap and SmallCap ended 0.57 per cent and 0.48 per cent.

“We expect a range of 79.20 and 79.85 on spot the near term,” said Anindya Banerjee, VP, Currency Derivatives and Interest Rate Derivatives at Kotak Securities Ltd.

–IANS