The blue dollar has awakened again from the dead calm it brought and it went up four pesos in one day, to close at $ 297. The informal jump coincided with two relevant economic data: July inflation was 7.4% -the highest record in the last 20 years- and the Central Bank raised the reference rate of the market by 10 basis points, up to 69.5%.

With this jump, blue diverged from financial dollars, which remained low. Cash with liqui dropped 1.2% and closed $ 285.3, while the MEP dollar lost 2.3% and reached $ 280.7.

Casual hit a $ 281 mark on August 1, on a descending tour that caused him to miss 60 pesos in ten days after the excessive leap he had made after the departure of Martín Guzmán from the Palacio de Hacienda.

In the interregnum of Silvina Batakis, the informal came to peek for a few hours at $ 350 and began to fade when the rumors of Sergio Massa’s landing at the Ministry of Economy took shape.

In recent days, the blue dollar has alternated between highs and lows, until it has strengthened in the last few hours in the heat of inflationary data.

Lower country risk

The Central Bank took precautions on a day that should have been busy and chose to announce the expected rate hike hours before inflation figures were known.

With this, the Central managed to maintain the downward trend of financial dollars and to sustain itself the good performance of dollar bonds, which between 1 and 2% were recovered. Country risk therefore returned 0.8%, to 2,441 basis points.

In this the Central rotates managed to buy 3 million dollars. It is the second consecutive day with a balance in favor, after the 15 million dollars he pocketed on Wednesday. In any case, he was unable to reverse the trend of the first wheels of the month which led him to have to sell 840 million dollars.

The power plant managed to close the wheel with a draw in favor despite the demand to meet the import payments for energy and fuels was close to 70 million dollars.

“The Central Bank bought only $ 3 million and the exchange rate continues to slow. It appears that the monetary authority is trying to do something like fine-tuning based on the trend of the real, which seems very inappropriate in a context where the delay in the exchange rate is evident considering the commitment with the IMF (real exchange rate). as of the end of 2021), the gap and the non-accumulation of reserves “, indicated by the consulting firm Aurum.

Is the carry trade making a comeback?

Aurum also pointed out that the central rate rises to 69.5% “it tries to decompress the foreign exchange front by increasing the cost of the loan in pesos so that the dollars are liquidated. But the expectation of devaluation remains so high that the rate hike continues to lag behind the curve. “

As rates rise, analysts They see the conditions for the renewal of the carry tradewith investors benefiting from high pesos yields and exchange rate stability.

“Financial dollars continue to go through a period of relative calmafter having deflated from the highs despite the gap remaining at high levels of the order of 1005 “, the economist Gustavo Ber observed. Thus,” while investors continue to closely follow the trend of monetary aggregates and liquid reserves, some they are tempted to resume carry-trade tactics “.

AQ