Brazil's stocks and currency gained on Friday, snapping a three-day losing streak, as dollar inflows from exporters supported the currency and equity investors jumped back into the market. The Bovespa index of the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange rose 2.15 percent to close at 51,617.97 points.
After hitting a record high on Monday, the index fell 3.6 percent over three days, including a 2.5 percent slump on Thursday. The Bovespa has gained 4.7 percent in May and is up 15.3 percent so far in 2007. At the stock exchange, state-controlled oil company Petrobras, the heaviest weighted stock in the index, climbed 1.28 percent to 46.70 reais.
The company said late on Thursday an internal investigation did not find evidence showing inside information was leaked before the oil driller announced a take-over bid of Ipiranga, as part of a group of buyers. Iron ore giant CVRD, the second heaviest-weighted stock in the index, gained 2.61 percent to 71.20 reais.
Brazil's currency, the real, gained nearly 1 percent to 1.952 per US dollar. "There was a period of profit-taking and today things returned to relative normalcy," said Francisco Gimenez Neto, operations director at the NGO currency brokerage.
The real had weakened nearly 1.5 percent in the previous three sessions, prompting exporters to cash in their dollars, said Mario Battistel, director of currency trading at the Novacao brokerage.
"With this jump in the exchange rate and given the expectation that the overall trend for the currency is to gain, exporters take advantage and sell a bit of their dollars," Battistel said. The real has traded below the 2.0 per dollar mark since May 15, when it pierced that level for the first time in six years.