Follow the dollar exchange rate today (18) – 09/18/2023 – Market

The dollar opened with a slight drop this Monday (18), while investors await the next interest rate decisions in the United States and Brazil, both scheduled for Wednesday (20).

The local market already takes for granted that the Selic rate will continue to fall, at 0.50 percentage points per meeting. In the US, however, there are still doubts. This week, American rates are expected to be maintained at 5.50% per year, but new pressures on inflation and strong economic data in the country have increased bets that new interest rate hikes this year may be necessary.

“The FOMC [comitê de política monetária dos EUA] should keep interest rates unchanged, but part of the market seems to believe that this maintenance will be temporary. For the next meeting, the market sees a 30% possibility of an increase, a minority value, but relevant”, says the Guide Investimentos team.

Analysts also remember that decisions on interest rates in England and Japan will also take place this week.

At 9:31 am, the dollar fell 0.23%, quoted at R$4.859.

On Friday (15), the Brazilian Stock Exchange interrupted a sequence of gains and recorded its only drop last week, following American indices in an environment of caution before and decisions on interest rates in Brazil and the United States. The Ibovespa ended the day down 0.53%, at 118,757 points.

Despite the negative trading session, the index guaranteed a strong weekly increase, rising 3%. Positive inflation data in Brazil and relief of fears about China and the USA boosted the Ibovespa.

The dollar remained stable at R$4.87, but accumulated a weekly devaluation of 2.2%.

The session was marked by volatility. Earlier in the day, data on industrial production and retail sales in China supported the Brazilian market by further easing fears about the country’s economic slowdown.

As a result, the Ibovespa even started the day on a high, but slowly gave back its gains and consolidated its decline at the end of the afternoon, in a session marked by the lack of relevant indicators on the local agenda and the market’s caution before decisions on interest rates in Brazil and in the USA, in addition to a profit-taking movement.

The main falls of the day on the Brazilian Stock Exchange were Vale (0.82%) and Itaú (0.21%), which were among the most traded of the session. The biggest fall of the day was once again the Casas Bahia Group, formerly Via, which fell 15.55%, still impacted by the poor performance of its public share offering this week.

“This Friday’s drop was in a way a realization of recent profits, which gained support from the fall in New York indices, standing out from the new gains in commodities”, says Alexsandro Nishimura, economist and partner at Nomos.

Profit making occurs when investors sell shares that have had a strong recent appreciation, to make a profit on the securities.

Guilherme Mendes, specialist at Blue3 Investimentos, mentions that American indices also put pressure on Ibovespa. The S&P 500, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq registered significant drops after stronger than expected economic data, which raised caution about a possible new interest rate hike in the country.

Furthermore, Mendes points out that future interest rate curves rose in this Friday’s trading session following the release of retail sales data in Brazil, which increased by 0.7% in July compared to the previous month, contrary to expectations in a Reuters survey. up 0.3%.

For Dierson Richetti, capital market specialist and partner at GT Capital, the market also operated cautiously amid expectations about the next Copom (Monetary Policy Committee) meeting.

“Although it is already widely reported that the committee will continue the cycle of interest rate declines, this still makes institutional investors a little cautious between today and Wednesday [20, dia da reunião]due to information from the Central Bank regarding the meeting”, says Richetti.

The Ibovespa was also impacted by a technical movement related to the expiration of stock options on the Stock Exchange.

Options are contracts that give the holder the right to sell or buy an asset at a specific date in the future for a pre-determined amount. The expiration of options, that is, the deadline to exercise this right, always occurs on the third Friday of the month, which impacts the price of assets in nearby trading sessions.

The positive highlight of the day, however, was the energy sector. Equatorial rose 1.70% and was the only one among the most traded to have a positive performance, while Energisa had the biggest increase of the day after approving a billion-dollar issue of debentures on Thursday (14).

Other companies in the sector, such as Eneva and Copel, were also among the biggest risers of the day, rising 1.98% and 1.91%, respectively. The index that brings together Ibovespa energy companies rose 1.38%.

With Reuters