It was not a good week for Argentine assets, which were pressured by the
worsening of financial indicators at the local level
and the global turbulence that arose from the fall of a regional bank in the United States and its fall in Europe, with the Credit Suisse crisis.
This Thursday, in a market that moved with an eye on the Central Bank board meeting and its decision on rates, the bonds reverse their fall with increases that reach 5%-
The blue dollar rose $4 to $383
, a mark it had not seen since the end of January, when it touched $386.
Financial exchange rates, meanwhile, advanced another notch
: cash with settlement, the way they use to become dollarized, companies rose 0.9% and
ended above $400,
which represents a new nominal record for free trading.
The exchange pressure occurs in a context in which the Central Bank continues to lose reserves: this Thursday it parted with US$96 million and has already sold US$732 million this month alone and almost US$1,800 since the beginning of the
year , more than half of what the same agency had managed to raise with the last "soybean dollar" program in December last year.
According to
market operators, the sales this Thursday were not to satisfy import demand, but to respond to the financial needs of two provinces, which must pay debt commitments.
Thus, US$26 million went to the province of Santa Fe, which has a due date next Thursday, and another US$60 million to Mendoza, which will have to meet its commitments this Friday.
"At this rate, the Central Bank is heading to close this month with interventions that could exceed US$ 1,000 million, surpassing the negative result of February (US$ 890 million) and January (US$ 192 million). Otherwise new announcements (Soya III dollar, etc.) the beginning of April would once again be in deficit due to the low liquidation of the agro-export complex," they indicated in Delphos.
In addition, the inflationary jump forced the agency to toughen its rate policy, something that it had been dodging since September of last year due to its quasi-fiscal cost and its impact on activity.
According to the consulting firm Aurum Valores, the rise in rates "only generates adverse scenarios of more expensive government financing itself, with greater difficulties in meeting its payments."
Despite the slight recovery this Thursday, Argentine debt securities fell more than 15% this month and most of them came to erase the gains that had accumulated at the beginning of the year.
The country risk ended with a drop of 3% to 2,324 points.
In the stock market, hand in hand with the improvement in the main Wall Street indices, the papers of Argentine companies listed on that market mostly rebounded.
The ADR of Banco Macro led the rise, with a jump of 7.7%.
The better mood helped the Merval index, which jumped 6.5%, with papers that rose more than 10%, such as the case of Bolsas y Mercados Argentinos ( BYMA).
Thus, the main indicator of the Buenos Aires stock market managed to reverse a streak of five wheels down in a row.
NE
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