It is that thinking regarding the weeks and months ahead, the ability to intervene in the futures market is relevant, especially to placate devaluation expectations, until something concrete is outlined with the Fund and the harvest dollars arrive gross. Since the stock of available reserves, contemplating the payment of the next maturities of this and next week, would be on the verge of knockout.
Margin
The truth is that the BCRA still has some margin to continue intervening in the dollar futures market (Rofex and MAE) considering the contracts agreed and the reference framework signed with both markets. It is worth remembering that since the global pandemic broke out, the BCRA’s greatest exposure in the futures market was last October when the position sold at the end of that month reached US$5,683 million.
If said stock is compared with the last one published, the BCRA would have a capacity of around US$1.5 billion to intervene. Throughout the first year of the pandemic, the BCRA began with a short position that did not reach US$1 billion, but then it climbed month by month and soon following five months, already in August it had climbed to more of US$5.1 billion. And it came to escalate in the midst of the run once morest reserves and the rise of the informal dollar to almost US$5.7 billion.
From there, it was gradually reduced and closed 2020 at US$4,103 million. 2021 started with an adjustment of the sold position of more than US$1.5 billion and reached less than US$600 million at the end of last April. There was a period of certain stability but then with the advent of the PASO and the legislative the whole game started once more. Thus, at the end of September, the BCRA closed with a sold position of almost US$1,800 million, which later more than doubled in October to US$3,615 million and in November raised it amid exchange skirmishes to US$5,151 million. .
Influence
Now, it is clear that this type of contract does not imply either the delivery or receipt of foreign currency at the end of the operation, but it does give an idea of the intervention capacity and how much they represent over the stock of BCRA reserves. The short position with which January 2020 began represented 11% of total gross reserves and 12% of reserves in convertible currencies, which not only include swaps with the central bank of China, the BIS and others, but also also the reserves of argendollars, SDRs and gold.
In general, before critical moments, the short position is around 1% or 2% of the stock of gross reserves. In 2020, between June and December they came to represent between 10% and 14%. Last year, they were lowering from 7% to 1% of the stock of gross reserves but in the middle of the pre-election period they rose to 8% and then to 12%. This gives a rough idea of how much the commitments in the futures market weigh in terms of the stock of gross and available reserves.