The combo of exchange rate measures that Sergio Massa has deployed in the last week on the market seems to have started to take effect. After starting the week on the upside, the blue dollar deflated and it is back at $469, the same price it closed at on Friday after a hectic two weeks.
Meanwhile, the central bank continues to lose reserves: the agency It sold nearly $260 million in its first two rounds in May. Although $99 million of so-called “dollar soybeans” came in on Wednesday, the highest since last Monday, the plant had to sell $125 million to meet demand from importers. Market sources indicated that the BCRA was facing $60 million in energy payments on Wednesday. Gross reserves fell again and punched through $35,000 million.
These same sources have indicated that they are the “Beginning of the month” purchases prompting Central to sell currencies: “The demand for savings in dollars was concentrated in these first two days of May, which is seasonally high in the first days of each month and tends to zero after the first week. The first working day was 43 million and today a similar amount is estimated,” they said.
In the brokerage firm Aurum Valores, they pointed out that “the BCRA keeps less and less foreign currency than the total liquidated per dollar of soybeans. it had withheld 55% of the liquidated”
With reserves in the crosshairs on the stock market, the interventions continue and the financial dollars “on the screen” move with dispersion. POn the one hand, the MEP dollar advanced by 0.1% but remained below $430; while the CCL closed down 2.5% and closed at $448. The Ministry of Economy has celebrated the drop in these prices, even though market participants have reported that there is a lot of dispersion.
The new NVC rules, which prevent big Alycs from trading in the so-called PPT (Price Time Priority) segment where trades are usually seen on screen in real time, have prompted big players to return to a secondary wheel called Senebi. In that market, the foreign exchange price appears more in demand and they traded more than 5% difference from what the screens reported on Tuesday.
That distance between the two prices is the so-called “gap gap”, another anomaly that the exchange introduces into the market and which had already “debuted” with Martín Guzmán in 2021. At that timethe gap with cash with liquid “screen” had come to exceed 11%.
While stock traders are attentive to these price differences to do what is known as “arbitrations”, that is, to buy in the market where the cheapest exchange is obtained and then to turn around and sell it where the price is highest and make money on that change; even savers are starting to find the MEP interesting.
It’s that the almost $40 gap between the price of the dollar on the stock market and the price paid for blue on the street stimulates something known as a “mash,” which consists of the same strategy: buying cheap and selling more expensive. This could be one of the main causes that explain the fall of the blue.
However, with tickets trading at $468 and officially closing at $225.20, the gap remains close to 108%, which continues to put further pressure on the market. In the futures sector, expectations of devaluation after next August are growing.
“The quotations in the futures market are a clear indicator of the uncertainty that reigns in the market. Implied write-down rates continue to increase day by day, without finding a ceiling, and all maturities, with the exception of May, are at levels extremely high,” they said at Delphos.
Source: Clarin
