After a week, the blue dollar rebounded by 15 pesos and touched the level $1,000, in a wheel in which increases in financial dollars were also recorded. The MEP has concluded $1,000.69 and the cash with the liquid inside $1046.46.
This way there is no longer any dollar under $1,000, even if all alternative dollars are cheaper in real terms than at the beginning of the year, taking into account that in the first quarter an inflation of 52%.
While alternative dollars halted their downtrend, the Central Bank continued its buying spree. This Tuesday took 242 million dollars and therefore the reserves closed at 29,041 million dollars.
“In April it acquired 1,554 million dollars in the first five days and has already exceeded half of last month’s purchases. From December 2023 total purchases of 12.93 billion dollars“said operator Gustavo Quintana.
For the economist Gustavo Ber, “Beyond the strong currency purchases, the crawling peg dynamics, at only 2%, remains worrying against inflation”.
However, he adds that “a low depreciation rate is assumed would continue in the short term in the context of abundant crop liquidation“.
“Even so, and recognizing that this strategy aims to continue to contribute to the deceleration of inflation, financial dollars and futures- They continue to validate the calm exchange rate scenarioand a new reduction in rates is also expected to contribute on this front too to moderating the nominal value of the economy”, observed Ber.
Another element that plays in favor of the exchange rate is the price of Rofex futures. Although today there were increases of up to 1.9% in prices for January 2025, when the coin is expected to be worth $ 1,350, This supposes an increase of only 53% from $883 in April. The market therefore seems to believe that there will not be a new strong rise in the exchange rate in the coming months.
“We believe this will happen in the short term We will see a stable dollar or even a dollar that could continue to fall with the Central Bank buying dollars every day. We don’t believe this dynamic will change. The question is how sustainable this is,” says Javier Casabal, Fixed Income Strategist at Adcap Grupo Financiero.
Casabal specifies that payments for 100% of imports will begin in April. “When we start paying for imports we will see the real purchasing capacity, knowing that a good part of those payments were postponed to the beginning of the year because there were no dollars and were delayed until the large harvest. At this time, when the harvest has just started, we need to see how powerful it is and whether it can cover 100% of import payments and see a more normal market,” he adds.
Bonds collapsed
While financial dollars have paused the price decline, Bonds have slowed down the bullish movement underway since the beginning of 2024 and this resulted in a price improvement of approximately 50%. Nearly all Argentine dollar-denominated stocks traded lower, with the AL30 losing 1.7%.
With bonds falling, country risk had a slight rebound which led it to close higher 1,220 basis points.
From Rava Bursátil, Fernando Staropoli underlined that “Merval has recovered, although with less intensity than yesterday”. The local stock market index gained 1.9% while in dollars it grew by 0.8%.
After the news of HSBC’s purchase spread, Banco Galicia (GGAL) shares They rose more than 2% in the local stock market, while in New York the ADR increased by 3.5%. In Buenos Aires, however, shares of energy companies, such as Transportadoras Gas del Norte e del Sur, fell between 4 and 5%. The TGS ADR loses 3.5% on Wall Street.
Source: Clarin
