Last year those who bet on fixed conditions they ended up earning more than those who preferred to save in dollars, despite various moments of turbulence in the foreign exchange market. The first days of the year are a good time to analyze investments and Argentine savers return to the same question as always: dollar or fixed term?
Anticipating this response is no easy task: the parallel dollar has risen up to 73% in 2022 and many City analysts estimate that they could experience a jump in the summer months, due to the excess of pesos issued in the latter part of the year and the decrease in revenue of dollars to the official circuit due to the impact of drought.
The “plazofijistas”, who benefited from the rate hike faced by the Central Bank last year, could see this momentum cut short if the organization headed by Miguel Pesce finally decides to retrace this upward path of the economy’s reference rates, in the light of the last two inflation figures for 2022.
The monetary authority anticipated last week, in its “Goals and plans” for 2023, that it will closely monitor the evolution of inflation to decide what to do with interest rates. The idea is that they could go down from the 75% annual rate they currently holdbut they maintain a positive bias towards rising prices in the economy.
The expectation at City is next week, after the data from Inter December inflation, the Central Board of Directors is betting on a rate cut. This is a delicate move: if inflation shows signs of slowing down, it is very costly for the economy and for the level of activity to maintain the 107% annual percentage rate of charge, but a rapid fall in rates can reawaken the dollar appetite.
Economist Nery Persichini, of GMA Capital, explained:. “Credit to the private sector is contracting at double-digit rates, adjusted for inflation, with consumer finance plunging 20% a year in real terms”
“Easing the financial tourniquet is politically attractive in an election year, especially when inflation gave a positive surprise in November. But hasty easing could give a boost to the dollar, which is the variable on which the peso exchange rate it has the greatest influence in the short-term,” he explained.
Analyzing last month’s numbers, Persichini noted: “Leliq real rate was positive at 15.6% TNA with November CPI data. If December inflation is around 5.5%, the real premium would be 8.7%.”
With an annual rate of 75%, fixed conditions yield 6.3% per month. The Central Bank has slowed its daily rate of devaluation and is letting the official dollar run in line with inflation, estimated at 5%. Parallel dollars are up as much as 1.4% so far in January. If a saver believes that the blue dollar or the MEP dollar, the only price to which he has unrestricted legal access, will rise more than 6.3% this month, he should consider positioning himself in the greenback.
In the peso world, Brian Torchia, Corporate Finance Manager at PGK Consultores, recommended: “distributing positions between traditional fixed-yield and inflation-linked yield alternatives, trying to mitigate the risk of an inflationary explosion, for example with a distribution fixed 60% and 40% inflation and then pivoted in favor of one or the other”.
Source: Clarin
