The blue dollar is on an upward trend and the market is wondering: is it expensive or cheap?

He Blue dollar rose $10 and is trading at $1,450 This Wednesday, July 10, and it once again marks its nominal intraday record price, since on Monday it had already been at this value, but then it fell. The rise of the last few days is marked and abrupt, since it had climbed $55 last week and the gap with the official is 56.8%. There is no doubt that nIt usually reaches peak values, but is it expensive or cheap in real terms?

Blue dollar: for some analysts, it is cheap

Alan Versalli, economist at Eco Go, considers in dialogue with Ambit that, “despite the rise in parallel dollars (started particularly since the last rate cut by the BCRA in May) the blue dollar is still cheap in real terms, if we compare it with certain moments of political and financial turbulence that we saw during the previous government’s administration.”

And it is that, he mentions, for example, that the value of $1,100 that the blue dollar registered during the electoral processbefore the first round, and would be equivalent to about $2,900 today and the, the $550 which he reached at the time of Martín Guzmán’s resignation from the Ministry of Economy, in 2022, would be around $2,500for example. Thus, for Versalli, “The average blue dollar at today’s prices, taking into account these values, would be just over $2000“.

Accordingly, according to that perspective, Even with the overheating of the gap in recent weeks, the blue dollar would be cheap and points out that this becomes even more noticeable in a context in which we continue with a situation of exchange rate controls.

A blue dollar lagging behind inflation

The same opinion is expressed Ariel Sbdar, CEO and co-founder of Cocos Capital, He points out that while it is true that “the dollar has overheated in recent days, it is still cheap.” Thus, he indicates that, although the exchange rate adjustment that was seen was somewhat aggressive and rapid, it was not so strong in real terms.

What happens is that, if you compare the long-term variables and analyze that The blue dollar is around $1,450, but in January it was at $1,300even with strong inflation, is cheap. Accordingly, Sbdar believes that “the exchange rate is not expensive” and calculates that The October 2023 price would be equivalent to one of $2,500 today, if adjusted for inflation.

Other voices say that the blue dollar is expensive

However, There are opposing views in the market to this view.. One of them is that of the economist Elena Alonso, who points out that “The reference measure is the Cash Settlement Dollar (CCL) and the MEP and, based on the prices they have today, it seems that the trend of the blue would be to converge towards those values.”

In that sense, for Alonso, The blue is expensive at the moment, unless the CCL cash recovers value these days and are positioned well above the informal.

And, along the same lines, it points Salvador Di Stefano, known as the “blues guru”who thinks that “The dollar is expensive at these price levels and should drop to the $1.2050/1.300 zone. Its position is based on the fact that We are going to end the period in which people buy dollars to vacation abroad. That, on the one hand, but, on the other, he mentions that “there is a very important recession and it does not seem that many people have any pesos left to go buy dollars.”

“In addition, a good part of the people who collected the coupons on the bonds are going to sell them because they need working capital and I don’t see a scenario in which there are excess pesos“, says Di Stefano.

In short: is it expensive or cheap?

Consequently, Everything would indicate that the definition of whether the blue dollar is expensive or cheap depends on which variable each analyst takes as a reference to make the evaluation.but the concrete thing is that, if it is taken as parameter inflationwhich has accumulated an annual increase of around 90% in the first half of the year, against a blue dollar that advanced 41% so far in 2024 (including the first week of July) It’s still cheap.

In addition, If the purchasing power of a blue dollar from a year ago is applied to the current one and the value that this exchange rate had at that time and the evolution that it should have had if it had followed inflation is calculated, it would also be cheap. Likewise, many analysts consider that it has not yet reached its ceiling, which would be around $1,500/1,550.

Now, Taking into account the economic context, the income situation and the evolution of financial exchange rateswhich advance 42.5% in the case of the CCL and 38.2% in the case of the MEP in the year, the blue dollar seems to be a bit pricey or almost in line at the moment.

Definitely, The blue dollar is another economic variable that the market analyzes and cannot be measured based on a single parameter, but in context.

However, it is worth remembering that It is an unregulated market that is often very volatile due to its small size.. Consequently, the main reference should be the official dollar, which there is a general consensus in the city that is outdated, and the financial markets, which have also risen this year well behind inflation.