Dollar opens slightly lower with investors waiting for Copom minutes | Economy

The dollar opened slightly lower this Monday (25), in a shorter week in Brazil and in much of the world due to the Good Friday and Easter holidays.

Investors await the release of new economic data over the next few days, with emphasis on the minutes of the last meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (Copom) of the Central Bank of Brazil (BC), which reduced the Selic, the basic interest rate, to 10.75% per year.

See below for a summary of the markets.

Last Friday (25), the North American currency rose 0.39%, quoted at R$4.9985.

As a result, he accumulated:

• increase of 0.02% in the week;
• gain of 0.52% in the month;
• increase of 3.01% in the year.

Ibovespa starts operating at 10am.

On Friday, the index fell 0.88%, to 127,027 points.

As a result, he accumulated:

• increase of 0.23% in the week;
• drop of 1.54% in the month;
• and a drop of 5.33% in the year.

Understand what makes the dollar rise or fall

Despite being a shorter week due to the Good Friday holiday, the next few days will feature a series of important announcements in Brazil.

Tomorrow (26), the BC will release the minutes of the last Copom meeting, which ended with another 0.5 percentage point cut in the Selic rate, taking it to the level of 10.75% per year.

Although the result was already expected, a detail in the institution’s statement after the meeting caught attention: the directors signaled a new cut of the same magnitude only for the next Committee meeting, while the last few times the statement contained information that new cuts would take place in the “next meetings”.

Regarding the minutes, “the market expects the document to provide more details about the BC’s decision to signal the 0.5 percentage point cut only for the next meeting, in May”, points out the BTG Pactual analysis team.

On the internal agenda, highlights also include the Broad Consumer Price Index 15 (IPCA-15), which is the preview of official inflation for March, the BC Quarterly Inflation Report and employment data from CAGED.

Furthermore, there is also an expectation that the National Treasury will be able to release results of the central government’s public accounts and the federal public debt during the week.

Abroad, attention also remains focused on the interest rate scenario. Last week, the Federal Reserve (Fed, the American central bank) decided to keep its interest rates unchanged, between 5.25% and 5.50% per year. However, there is an expectation that a cycle of cuts could begin in the next meetings, still in the first half of the year.

To do this, the Fed mainly looks at inflation data. And on Friday (29) the main one comes out, the PCE price index, which reveals consumer inflation figures.

The market should monitor this result to try to draw a perspective on the future of interest rates in the United States.