Most Latin American currencies weakened on Friday as investors' appetite ebbed in synch with a retreat on Wall Street, where key US stock indexes slipped from recent records. Latin American currencies have gained this week as US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke reassured investors that the bank's monetary stimulus, which has supported global appetite for risk during the past several years, should remain in place for a little longer.
Market sentiment was fragile at the end of the week, however, as disappointing earnings at technology companies weighed on US stock markets. Brazil's real lost 0.3 percent even after the central bank sold 20,000 traditional currency swaps, derivative contracts that mimic the sale of dollars in the futures market. The auction was designed to roll over similar contracts that expire on August 1 and had little market impact.
Brazil's Finance Minister Guido Mantega told Reuters emerging market currencies will likely stabilise at weaker levels as Bernanke's more dovish testimony about the withdrawal of stimulus measures cleared up a series of "confusing" messages initially sent by US policymakers. Yields paid on Brazil's interest-rate futures mostly declined, especially those of longer-dated contracts, after inflation measured by the IPCA-15 came in slightly below the ceiling of a government target and investors' forecasts. Brazil's interest-rate contract maturing in January 2014 , one the most traded, was flat at from Thursday's adjusted close, at 8,75 percent, while yields paid on contracts expiring in January 2017 dropped 7 basis points to 10.34 percent.
Some investors in Brazil's interest-rate market wondered if lower inflation prints would encourage the central bank to curtail its current monetary tightening cycle. Still, some 80 percent of those investors bet policymakers will raise the Selic rate by half a percentage point in August, to 9 percent a year, Reuters data showed. Mexico's peso dipped 0.1 percent to 12.5250 per dollar, after reaching in the previous session an intraday mark of 12.4272, its strongest level since the end of May. Chile's peso lost 0.5 percent against the dollar, weighed down by a 0.3 percent drop in the price of copper, the country's main export product.
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