By Fabricio de Castro
SÃO PAULO (Reuters) -After having reached 5 reais again, the spot dollar closed on Monday falling against the real, with market participants taking advantage of higher prices to sell currency, amid expectations for the release of economic data and documents for the remainder of the week, both in Brazil and abroad.
The spot dollar closed the day at 4.9741 reais on sale, down 0.49%. In March, the US currency accumulated an increase of 0.05%. At its highest price of the day, at 10:01 am, the dollar reached 5.0076 reais (+0.18%) and, at its lowest, at 2:47 pm, it reached 4.9373 reais (-0.43%).
Around 5:10 pm, the first-month dollar futures contract on B3 fell 0.58%, to 4.975 reais on sale.
At the beginning of the day, the spot dollar rose in Brazil, approaching 5 reais, which triggered a selling movement on the part of exporters and investors with long positions in the North American currency, which caused the dollar to migrate into negative territory.
“We had two moments in the session. First, the dollar reached 5 reais, amid expectations for the heavy agenda (of indicators) this week”, commented the director of Correparti Corretora, Jefferson Rugik. “When the dollar reached 5 reais, there was a dismantling of long positions, with investors making profits. Then the dollar started to follow the foreign market.”
The dollar’s retreat against the real throughout the afternoon was in line with abroad, where the US currency recorded losses against other currencies early on.
Around 5:10 pm, the dollar index — which measures the performance of the US currency against a basket of six currencies — fell 0.20%, to 104.220.
In Brazil, attention continues to be focused on the release of data for the remainder of the week.
On Tuesday, the minutes of the last meeting of the Central Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (Copom) and the March IPCA-15 will be released, as well as US consumer confidence figures. On Wednesday, figures come out from the central government and the Register of Employed and Unemployed Persons (Caged) in Brazil. On Thursday the highlights are the BC Inflation Report and the US GDP in the fourth quarter.
This Monday morning, the BC sold all 16,000 traditional currency swap contracts offered to roll over June maturities.
(Editing by Pedro Fonseca)
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