THE yuan exchange rate stabilized after plumbing fresh six-year lows yesterday, as large State-owned banks sold U.S. dollars in an apparent effort to slow the decline in the currency’s value against the dollar. The yuan has fallen about 1.5 percent since the end of September, a slide driven partly by a resurgent dollar and worries about slowing economic growth. Sentiment toward the yuan has also been hurt by growing market confidence in the likelihood of a U.S. interest rate rise in December with a recent Reuters poll showing the largest bearish positions in the currency since late July. Spot yuan was trading around 6.7709 per dollar in late afternoon trading, hitting a low of 6.7770 per dollar at one point in morning trade, compared with Friday’s 6.7655 late session close. Three traders said big State-owned banks were selling dollars in the domestic foreign exchange market to help stabilize the yuan in morning trade. “Dollar demand was very strong today. And dollar purchases by individual residents also went up today,” said a trader at a Chinese bank in Shanghai, adding that State banks sold dollars as a result to prop up the Chinese currency. Some traders suspect that State-owned banks occasionally sell dollars on behalf of the central bank to keep the yuan from sliding too quickly, while others believe big banks trade on their own behalf. The Chinese bank trader and a Shanghai-based trader at a foreign bank speculated that the People’s Bank of China might want to stabilize the yuan around its current level. Before the market opened yesterday, the central bank fixed the midpoint at 6.769, easier than the previous fix of 6.7558 and its weakest since September 2010. Traders said yesterday’s fixing came in weaker than their models had suggested, and that accelerated the yuan’s falls in the morning. “The market consensus is that the yuan would fall to 6.8 per dollar by the end of this year, which is just 200 pips from the current level,” said another trader at a Chinese bank. (SD-Agencies) | 