Brasília – The United States dollar price has climbed for the third straight day in Brazil and closed above R$ 2.60 this Friday (14th), the highest in nine years. The commercial dollar closed at R$ 2.601, up 0.23% from the day before and the highest since April 18th, 2005, when the currency closed at R$ 2.616.
The day was marked by financial market volatility. Early in the morning, the dollar skyrocketed. At around 11:00 am, it sold for as much as R$ 2.627, but lost steam in the early afternoon. By 4:30 pm, the US dollar had dropped as low as R$ 2.594, but rose above R$ 2.60 in the final minutes of the trading day. The dollar is up 4.92% month-to-date in November and 10.32% year-to-date.
The instability is made worse by the international scenario, especially since the United States’ Central Bank the Federal Reserve (Fed) stopped injecting dollars into the world economy, prompted by an improvement in domestic employment rates.
The dollar price has stayed high despite the Brazilian Central Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee’s raising of the Selic benchmark interest rate to 11.25% per annum. Theoretically, higher domestic interest rates help bring the dollar down by increasing the spread between rates in Brazil and the United States, thus making Brazil more attractive to international investors.
The São Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) has closed virtually flat. Its principal index, Ibovespa, closed down 0.14% on Friday. The decline was driven by a 2.94% decline in Petrobras shares, the most traded on Bovespa.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
