Tuesday, 1 October 2013 00:40
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By Wealth Trust Securities
Activity in secondary bill and bond markets continued to remain high yesterday as yields dipped marginally with inflation for the month of September reflecting a deceleration on its point to point and annualised average to 6.2% and 7.80% respectively against its previous month’s figures of 6.30% and 8.0%.
Activity was mainly seen on the liquid five-year maturity (i.e. 1 April 2018) as it was seen hitting a daily and a one month low of 11.68% once again to close the day at 11.68/70 against its last week’s closing levels of 11.71/75.
In secondary bill markets, continued demand saw January to February 2014 bills change hands within the range of 9.05% to 9.35%; May 2014 being within the range of 9.90% to 10.00% and August 2014 within the range of 10.38% to 10.42% while the latest 364-day bill change hands at levels of 10.51%.
Meanwhile in money markets, overnight call money and repo rates remained a steady to average 8.44% and 8.02% respectively. The Central Bank continued to refrain from conducting any overnight repo auctions under its Open Market Operations (OMO) as it drained out Rs. 3 billion for a period of seven days at a weighted average rate of 7.95%. In addition, its effort to drain out a further Rs. 5 billion by way of outright sales of Treasury bills for a period of 31 days was unsuccessful with the auction been rejected.
Rupee remained steady
The USD/LKR rate remained steady to close the day at Rs. 132.00/05 yesterday on the back of thin volumes. The total USD/LKR traded volume for the previous day (30 September 2013) stood at $ 29.05 million.
Some of the forward dollar rates that prevailed in the market were 1-Month: Rs. 132.95, 3-Months: Rs. 134.48 and 6-Months: Rs. 137.13.
