Blue dollar starts February in low: will it maintain the dynamics in the month?

• the restrictions that apply to financiers,
• the arrival of the vacationwhich makes those who had to travel abroad take advantage of the fact that the blue was cheaper than the Qatar dollar
• he excess weight for the soybean dollar, because it ended and part of the pesos went to the blue.

Blue dollar: lower demand for money pushes up

With these precedents in mind, the analysts outline what can happen with the informal exchange rate in February. And Buteler points out that “conditions have not changed much”, but there are some elements that will particularly affect the blue dynamics during February.

The first element that he mentions is that, although the dollar “is not cheap for the average income of Argentines”, in the second month of the year, the money demand and that means that many pesos tend to go towards the dollar, partly due to the search for coverage, but also for vacations.

Thus, Elena Alonso, an analyst at Grupo Broda, comments that the trend of January is beginning to be reversed, when there was an “overheating of demand for Dolar blue to avoid using the card abroad, since it was cheaper and many opted for that alternative”.

The loop ‘MEP dollar against blue’ counteracts the rise

However, the economist Federico Glustein considers that another situation is taking place that counteracts the upward pressures and pulls it down, generating the drop in recent days: the loop that many savers and investors do.

With “the curl” Glustein refers to what is being seen is that “many buy in the MEP and sell in blue to have a few pesos of profit.” And it is that, according to the economist of Grupo Broda Elena Alonso, as there is a significant gap between the MEP and the blue.

It happens that, for example, this Wednesday, the MEP quoted about $23 below the blue, since it was located at $355.76 for sale. Thus, even despite the decline, those who bought the dollar bag and they sold it in the blue they made an interesting margin. That sale is injecting some dollars into the bluewhich increases supply and offsets a possible increase in demand, as indicated by economists.

Thus, for Glustein, in the coming days “we are going to see a handsaw movement: it will go up and down drawing peaks”, but he considers that, in general, the trend will be upward, pressured by the prospects of lower crop income for agriculture.

Likewise, he anticipates that, looking more in the long term, as the elections get closer, we are going to see, surely, a greater dollarization for coverage. “It can pick up momentum after some quiet time,” she says.

The devaluation of the official dollar, a key parameter

And it is that, as Alonso points out, It is not expected that there will be an imminent devaluation of the official exchange rate by the Central Bank (BCRA). “It seems to me that the exchange rate gap is going to be maintained, but there is a lot of peso issuance and the inflation it will be high Those are all elements that put upward pressure on the blue, but I think that the curl will work as an element to counteract that pressure, ”she says.

With these elements on the table, analysts expect the tension to continue after the drop in recent days, but moderately. In the words of Glustein “most likely we will not see rises of $8 in one day, but rather they will be smaller and a higher price will be confirmed.” stability in the exchange market”.

And he points out that this is part of a context in which the market expects that, after having recovered a lot of ground at the beginning of the year, it will now have to rise 5% per month to settle at a more logical value, in line with how it has been the official government exchange rate.

Thus, the outlook for February is a blue with a contained upward trend, but, everything indicates that, as the elections get closer, there can be greater instability. If the elections are in August (I PASS them), when will we be able to see this? Difficult to be as precise in a market as unstable as the blue, but Glustein predicts that, “once the formulas are known, the market will decide well which hedging mechanisms it will use.”