USD/INR Price News: Indian rupee bounces off 78.40 with eyes on Fed’s Powell

• USD/INR retreats from record top as Indian rupee bulls brace for central banks’ aggression.
• RBI is up for publishing June Meeting Minutes, chatters over 75-100 bps rate hike amplify.
• Fed’s Powell has a tough task to defend the biggest rate hike since 1994.

USD/INR takes a U-turn from the all-time high surrounding 78.40, remains pressured at 78.15 during the initial hour of the Indian trading session on Wednesday.

In doing so, the Indian rupee (INR) pair justifies the Indian market’s hawkish bias over the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) next move. It’s worth noting that the pair’s weakness fails to respect the broad US dollar rebound amid the market’s anxiety ahead of the key events, namely Fed Chair Powell’s Testimony on the bi-annual Monetary Policy Report, as well as RBI Monetary Policy Meeting.

India’s Monetary Policy Committee is likely to hike the key repo rate by another 75-100 basis points in the next six months, while USD/INR is likely to rise further, DBS said per Reuters. The upbeat view for USD/INR also takes clues from the fears of surging inflation and the recently firmer data from India.

On the other hand, risk-aversion weighs on the US stock futures and the Treasury yields but helps the US dollar to consolidate the recent losses. That said, the S&P 500 Futures drop 1.10% intraday to reverse the two-day rebound from the lowest levels since late 2020. It’s worth noting that the US Treasury yields also fail to cheer the risk-aversion as the benchmark 10-year Treasury yields dropped five basis points (bps) to 3.25% at the latest.

Fears of the Fed’s aggression, as well as concerning the US recession, act as the key catalysts to weigh on risk appetite. US President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen tried to convince markets that the recession fears aren’t inevitable. Further, Richmond Federal Reserve President Thomas Barkin said that there will be no rapid return for the U.S. economy to the experience of the previous decade of stable growth, jobs and inflation, Reuters reported.

Moving on, USD/INR sellers may seek hawkish comments from the RBI Monetary Policy Meeting Minutes to keep the reins. However, major attention will be given to Fed’s Powell. Should Powell manage to justify the biggest rate hike since 1994, as well as portray Fed’s aggression in taming inflation, the risk-off mood may get a boost, which in turn could propel the US dollar.

Technical analysis

USD/INR forms double tops around 78.40, which in turn teases bears if the prices sustained a downside break of the 77.87 horizontal support, comprising multiple lows marked in the last one week.