He is an expert in financial matters and in building investment portfolios for retailers and wholesalers.
He uses few words and the question was:
What are savers doing to protect themselves in the election year?
"Retailers buy
bills
(dollar blue), the big ones continue to bet on shares, the most risky on dollar bonds and companies do not know how to find more refuges for pesos and end up with Treasury
bills in pesos
(Ledes) , after being full of bonds tied to the dollar (
dollar-linked
) those that matter and tied to the CER (inflation-cost of living) the rest.
The paths of money define, to a large extent, the expectations of the business world regarding this uncertain 2023 with presidential elections.
Much of the investment scaffolding is based on the bet that Economy Minister
Sergio Massa
works for his presidential candidacy and, therefore, will try to avoid a
broad devaluation of the peso
by all means .
Thus, they believe that
there will be a soybean dollar 3
or a meat dollar 1 to
devalue by sector
in an attempt to get the dollars that are scarce to meet the year's deadlines and maintain economic activity, avoiding
accumulating more arrears in the payment of the imports,
which would already reach US$ 9,000 million.
Sweeping foreign payment commitments under the rug was one of the elements that
Juntos por el Cambio
denounced during the week, however, dollar bonds (an indicator of trust-distrust) continued to rise.
What do the markets speculate on?
Imagination flies and they believe that Massa could advance on the
Sustainability Guarantee Fund
to obtain more dollarized bonds with the aim of completing a guarantee (Repo) and obtaining US$ 1,000 million or more from the banks.
For the Treasury, the cost would not be less: You have to put some US$3,000 million in bonds
to get US$1,000 million, but
the minister and the government in an electoral plan know that
the worst that can happen to them is to run out of foreign currency.
For this operation to materialize, market operators say, it would be necessary for the bonds that are currently trading at around US$36 (GD30) to rise to US$40 (this is the profit that wholesale investors expect) and that is the engine of the improvement of these titles that have the
threat of being able to be restructured at some point.
Investors who bet on the rise in the
shares of private companies
have their recent history in their favor (the Merval rises 20% so far in 2023 and
183% in one year
) and insist that the Stock Market still has an upward path, although they do not rule out some decline as a result of profit taking by those who believe
that the best moment is passing.
They look at
the concentration of the debt in pesos in April
($1.9 trillion) and doubt how Massa will get the renewal a few months after the primaries with the
"financial wall"
that implies the
resistance of the markets to take debt for later of the elections.
In the midst of the doubts, there are a couple of certainties: one is that
the Central Bank increases the wholesale dollar a little above 5%
per month and, therefore, it goes at a
lower rate than inflation
(it would have been close to 6% in January) but it still does not imply a
noticeable delay
for the election year.
The other certainty is that
wages start 2023 with a quarterly increase of 15%
that is part of the government's objective that parity wages turn 60% for the year, with a trigger clause in the event that inflation overflows.
The official dollar and parities traveling at 5% per month are the framework that the government tries with the
"fair prices"
slowed down and the rest rising 3.2% per month until June.
Is it fictional?
The economy shows that inflation has a
floor at 5% per month
and that the "anchor" continues to point to an exchange gap (difference between the wholesale and free dollar) of 95% of unstable characteristics as long as the Central Bank continues to be more seller than buyer currency.
look also
What can happen to the dollar and rates in the election year
The GD30 bonus, Sergio Massa's jewel for the attempt to stop a run
