By Fabricio de Castro
SÃO PAULO (Reuters) – In yet another session of frozen prices, the dollar in cash closed this Tuesday close to stability against the real, with investors waiting for indicators or news that could substantially change positions in the futures market , on the eve of the closing of the first quarter.
The dollar in cash closed the day at 4.9805 reais on sale, a slight drop of 0.07%. In March, the US currency accumulated an increase of 0.18%.
In the futures market, the currency for April — the most liquid — fluctuated close to stability for practically the entire day.
At 5:05 pm, on B3, the first maturity dollar futures contract rose 0.10%, to 4.9815 reais on sale.
On a day with a relatively empty agenda in Brazil and abroad, the dollar once again fluctuated within very narrow margins. At the minimum exchange rate of the day, at 9:01 am, the spot currency reached 4.9719 reais (-0.24%) and, at the maximum, at 10:16 am, it reached 4.9949 reais (+0.22%). From the minimum to the maximum, the variation was only +0.46%, which gives an idea of how much the prices remained fixed throughout the day.
An operator interviewed by Reuters stated that investors continue to wait for news that could, in fact, serve as a reason to change positions in the US currency. According to him, everyone is “waiting for lightning to strike”.
For Lais Costa, an analyst at Empiricus Research, no relevant news really emerged that would change the scenario for the exchange rate.
“The flow is not occurring due to structural changes in the scenario — it is more due to adjustment of positions. Something really relevant would have to come up for us to have the dollar moving around here,” she commented.
As Thursday is the last working day of March, the next session will be the dispute over the Ptax for the end of the month — and the quarter. Normally, volatility tends to increase in sessions like this, but market professionals reinforced that, without impactful news, the dispute between longs and shorts may not be as intense.
Ptax is an exchange rate calculated by the Central Bank based on spot market quotations and which serves as a reference for the settlement of futures contracts.
At the end of each month, financial agents usually try to direct it to levels that are more convenient for their positions, whether they are purchased (in the direction of rising prices) or sold in dollars (in the downward direction). At the end of quarters, the importance of Ptax is even greater.
As a backdrop to the dispute this Thursday, a series of indicators will be released in Brazil: the IBGE unemployment rate in February and the Central Bank’s GDP and balance of payments projections in the Inflation Report, among others. Also noteworthy is the press conference by the president of the BC, Roberto Campos Neto, on the Inflation Report.
In the USA, GDP and unemployment benefit figures, among others, will be released on Thursday.
At 5:15 pm, the dollar index — which measures the performance of the US currency against a basket of six currencies — was stable at 104.290.
In the morning, the BC sold all 16,000 traditional currency swap contracts offered to roll over June maturities.
