Rupee pares early losses to rule stable at 66.66 vs USD

The rupee pared its early losses to rule steady at its overnight levels of 66.66 against the American currency in late morning deals bouts of dollar selling from banks and exporters.
The domestic unit opened slightly lower at 66.69 as against yesterday's closing of 66.66 per dollar at the Inter-bank Foreign Exchange (Forex) market.
It swung between losses and gains at 66.7350 and 65.75 before quoting stable at 66.66 at 1030 hrs.
Meanwhile, the dollar index was up 0.16 per cent at 95.52 against a basket of six currencies in early trade.
Overseas, the US dollar gained against the basket currencies in early Asian trade, but was on track to end a tumultuous week with losses after the Federal Reserve trimmed its long-term interest rate expectations and the Bank of Japan rebooted its monetary policy framework.

Meanwhile, domestic equities regained some lost ground

and snapped a seven-day losing streak on low-level buying as well as covering-up of short positions.
The benchmark Sensex rose 61.10 points to close at 26,040.70, while broader Nifty was up 6.65 points to 7,985.75.
In the forward market, premium for dollar edged higher owing to renewed paying pressure from corporates.
The benchmark six-month premium for May firmed up to 131-133 paise from 129.5-131 paise and the far-forward November 2017 contract also moved up to 277-279 paise from 275-276.5 yesterday.
On the commodity front, crude prices slipped below USD 55 a barrel on Friday after the Energy Information Agency reported a 2.25mb addition to inventories and as higher Libyan output threatened to counter some of the supply cuts planned by OPEC and other producers.