The shekel is strengthening again against the dollar and the euro:
with the opening of trading this morning (Wednesday), the dollar weakened by 1% against the shekel and traded around NIS 3.12, while the euro weakened by 0.7% and traded around NIS 3.52.
Around the world, the euro is strengthening against the dollar, so it is also weakening less against the shekel.
As mentioned, the Governor of the Bank of Israel said in October that he was already less worried about the strengthening of the shekel and even explained that now its strengthening serves an equally important purpose - to curb the winds of inflation blowing from the world.
Recently, however, it became clear that the Bank of Israel had already purchased an additional $ 4 billion in November.
Israel's foreign exchange reserves have already crossed the $ 208 billion mark. Now, apparently, the Bank of Israel is once again trying to lower the gas from the purchase pedal that brings Israel's foreign exchange reserves closer to half of its world GDP - one of the highest in the world.
The dollar exchange rate plunges, Photo: Dudu Greenspan
As you may recall, the Bank of Israel announced for the first time in its history towards the end of last year that it was documenting a purchase of $ 30 billion this year.
He later clarified that this is a minimum amount, and if required he will purchase even more.
The idea in this statement was to leverage the effectiveness of the purchases.
But despite this statement and the actual purchases - which reached the set $ 30 billion, already in October, the shekel continued to strengthen strongly against the world's leading currencies and the bank was indeed required to continue buying foreign currency to a level that could reach more than $ 35 billion by the end of the year.
Trading on the stock exchange opened this morning with slight gains in the leading indices.
However, as expected, Bank Hapoalim's share falls by almost 2% against the background of the large share sale of the former controlling shareholder, Sheri Arison.
Yesterday, it sold 11.35% of its shares in the bank for NIS 11.7 billion.
This is after in April it sold 4.4% for NIS 1.5 billion.
Since its previous realization, the Hapoalim share has jumped by 25% and since the beginning of the year it has completed a rise of about 40%.
Prior to the realizations Arison announced its desire to sell control of the bank and even received approval from the authorities to dilute its holdings in the bank and in effect relinquish control of it.
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
If you found an error in the article, we'll be happy for you to share it with us