Mexico's stocks jumped on Friday as news of a US government plan to restore confidence in panicked financial markets boosted investor appetite for emerging market assets. The IPC benchmark stock index soared 4.57 percent to 25,701.03 points, reversing declines that took the IPC down to its lowest level in almost two years this week, while bonds made their biggest single-day jump in more than two years.
Following global equities, Mexican stocks were pounded earlier this week after the bankruptcy of Wall Street investment firm Lehman Brothers Holdings spread concern that other financial firms were on the verge of collapse.
Renewed worries about the year-old credit crisis spurred panic in financial markets in recent weeks, pushing investors to dump relatively risky emerging market assets for safer investments like US Treasuries. In debt trading, the government's benchmark 10-year peso bond rose 1.828 in price to 95.144, pushing its yield down 30 basis points to 8.51 percent.
In the equities market, miner Group Mexico climbed 18.51 percent to 13 pesos. Top retailer Wal-Mart de Mexico jumped 4.88 percent to $39.94. Shares of Banorte, Mexico's fifth-biggest bank and the largest not owned by a global financial institution, surged 19.99 percent to 38.53 pesos.
Fueling the turnaround, US authorities, led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, are working on a comprehensive solution to mop up hundreds of billions of dollars of bad debt from banks' balance sheets that have choked the global financial system.
Among concrete measures, the Federal Reserve helped shore up money markets while US securities regulators joined efforts by other countries to curb short-selling. But analysts said markets could remain highly volatile in the coming days as the US Congress mulls the prospects of a massive bailout and many banks and investment firms continue to sell assets to boost weak balance sheets.
Moreover, the economic impact of the crisis would likely mount in coming months, analysts said. "The jury is still out to see if this will be enough to avoid slowing growth in the United States and lower growth in the world economy," said Benito Berber, an economist covering Latin America at RBS Greenwich Capital Markets.