Rupee largely steady tracking shares

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MUMBAI (Reuters) - The rupee continued to trade largely steady near a fresh one-week high on Monday afternoon tracking gains in the domestic sharemarket and also boosted by the dollar's losses against major currencies.

* By 1:05 p.m., the partially convertible rupee was at 46.60/61 per dollar, after hitting 46.56, its highest since June 3 and 0.5 percent stronger than Friday's close of 46.84/85.

* The performance of the stock market would also be crucial for direction as foreign fund flows influence the rupee's fortunes, dealers said.

* The BSE Sensex (^BSESN : 17338.17 +273.22) were trading up nearly 1 percent with Reliance Industries (RELIANCE.NS : 1063.35 +17.1) leading the rise, taking cues from strong Asian markets.

* Traders were also watching the dollar's moves versus majors for direction.

* The index of the dollar against six major currencies was 0.7 percent lower. Most regional currencies were stronger compared to the dollar.

* The euro rose on Monday after a burst of short-covering lifted the single currency above $1.22 and further away from a four-year low, but traders were wary about chasing gains and expected its downtrend to continue.

* One-month offshore non-deliverable forward contracts were quoted at 46.71, weaker than the onshore spot rate.

* In the currency futures market, the most traded near-month dollar-rupee contracts on the National Stock Exchange (^NSEI : 5197.55 +78.35) and MCX-SX were at 46.6850 and 46.6825 respectively, with the total traded volume on the two exchanges at about $980 million.

(Reporting by Swati Bhat; editing by Sunil Nair)

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