The Indian rupee snapped a three-day winning streak on Monday as importers, including oil and gold firms pumped up dollar purchases, while weak domestic shares failed to offer much respite. Traders said there was heavy dollar demand from oil firms, the largest buyers of dollars in the domestic currency market, in opening trade and present intermittently through the day.

"There was demand from gold and oil importers along with stops getting triggered," said Vikas Babu Chittiprolu, a senior foreign exchange dealer with state-run Andhra Bank, referring to stop-losses in the dollar. The partially convertible rupee closed at 54.77/78 per dollar, 0.9 percent weaker than its Friday's close of 54.26/27.

In the offshore non-deliverable market, the one-month contract was at 55.06 while the three-month was at 55.59. In the currency futures market, the most-traded near-month dollar/rupee contracts on the National Stock Exchange, the MCX-SX and the United Stock Exchange all closed at 54.90 with a total traded volume of $5.87 billion.

Copyright Reuters, 2012