The price of the dollar recorded a new day of strong declines this Tuesday while the effect of the exchange intervention announced last week by the Central Bank, which helped offset the impact of the decline in the value of copper.
The US currency was down $21.89 at midday to $928.0 compared with $949.89 in the previous session.
In this way in the last three days it accumulated a decrease of $123, from the all-time high of $1,051 to where it closed on July 14.
However, so far in July it adds an advance of $8, while in 2022 it accumulates a rise of $76.
After that on Thursday, after an unusual upward climb, the dollar will close at a record $1,051the issuing institute announced a program for the sale of dollars, foreign exchange hedging instruments and a preventive provision of liquidity in the currency, for an amount of up to US$ 25,000 million, which began yesterday and will run until September 30.
“The exchange intervention of the Central Bank of Chile continues to generate a significant weakness in the dollar at the local level, reaching its lowest value so far this month,” said Ricardo Bustamente, head of trading studies at Capitaria.
“The massive sale of dollars that the monetary entity began yesterday has been key to this weakening, especially if we consider that the measures of the Central Bank and the Treasury to sell the North American currency represented just under 50% of yesterday’s transactions,” he added.
In this sense, he held that said action should continue to weaken the dollar in the local market, but warned that considering that the downward effects are still very short-term, it is possible that the upward trend will return in the coming days, due to external factors and political uncertainty and local economy.
The decline was also supported by the behavior of the currency globally. The dollar index, which measures the currency against a basket of 6 liquid currencies, including the euro, fell 0.74% to 106.44 points.
In this context, the peso strengthened despite to the decline in the price of copper, the country’s main export. The spot value of the metal fell 0.53% to $3.30 a pound on the London Metal Exchange. On Monday the price had recovered after six consecutive days down.
Three-month copper futures trades fell 1.6% to US$3.29 a pound.
According to analysts, movements in the metals market are being affected by macroeconomic forecasts, which point to widespread increases in interest rates globally.
Added to this are concerns about demand for the red metal, due to slower growth in China, the metal’s largest consumer.