Argentina’s Merval Index Tumbles; Ongoing Bank Drama Drives Down US Stocks

Latin American markets closed mixed on Thursday, with only slight gains, with the Merval falling 2.58% at closing, while Wednesday’s 0.25-point hike sent stocks tumbling

Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, speaks during a news conference following a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, May 3, 2023. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter percentage point and hinted it may be the final move in the most aggressive tightening campaign since the 1980s as economic risks mount. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg
By Bloomberg Línea
May 04, 2023 | 11:46 PM

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A roundup of Thursday’s stock market results from across the region

🌎 Colombia’s Colcap leads Latin America gains:

Latin American markets closed mixed on Thursday, with Argentina’s Merval index (MERVAL) posting the sharpest losses, falling 2.58%, dragged down by the shares of ALUA (ALUA), Transportadora Gas del Norte (TGNO4) and Banco BBVA Argentina (BBAR).

The official expectation that inflation would abruptly decelerate after the first quarter of the year is definitely behind us. Although Argentina’s statistics bureau INDEC will not release the official data of the consumer price index for April until May 15, both private analysts and within the government itself discount that it will again be around 7.5%, which would bring the accumulated inflation in the first four months of the year to levels of 30%.

There seems to be a certain coincidence among private consulting firms that April’s inflation would be barely below March’s 7.7% monthly rate. It would oscillate, according to these estimates, between 7.2% and 7.6% in a month in which seasonally there is usually a deceleration with respect to the previous month. And for May, they anticipate, the first signs do not look too encouraging either.

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Meanwhile, Colombia’s Colcap (COLCAP) led the day’s gains in the region, up 0.06%, and Chile’s and Peru’s markets also closed with slight increases.

🗽On Wall Street:

A rout in regional banks roiled markets, with anxiety about the next financial shoe to drop making traders boost their bets on Federal Reserve rate cuts. Apple Inc. rose in late hours after reporting earnings.

Another unsettling round of trading halts in the financial industry hit Western Alliance Bancorp and PacWest Bancorp this time amid losses that topped 60% for each stock. The rout engulfed several other lenders — big and small — with First Horizon Corp. down over 30% after its merger with Toronto-Dominion Bank was scrapped. A probe into Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s role in Silicon Valley Bank’s deal also weighed on sentiment.

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All 21 shares in the KBW Bank Index of financial heavyweights such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. retreated. The $2.5 billion SPDR S&P Regional Banking exchange-traded fund closed at the lowest since October 2020. The rout in banks kept a lid on the broader market, with the S&P 500 suffering its fourth straight decline.

The S&P 500 dropped 0.70%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average 0.80% and the Nasdaq Composite (CCMPDL) 0.46%.

Wall Street’s fear gauge, the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) spiked, hitting the key 20 mark. That’s a stark contrast with the calm that prevailed in markets for the most part in April and saw the measure dropping below 16 just last week.

That shows how investor confidence remains fragile after a string of bank failures and despite Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s Wednesday assurance that authorities were closer to containing the crisis. Smaller lenders are under pressure after a year of rate hikes hammered the value of their bond holdings and drove unrealized losses to an estimated $1.84 trillion.

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“The acute phase of bank turmoil may not be over, and policymakers need urgently to recognize that,” said Krishna Guha, vice chairman at Evercore ISI. “The problem is that their financial stability policy options are limited.”

Strategic options

In such a stressful scenario, some lenders have been trying to assuage investors — with little to no avail.

PacWest Bancorp tumbled 51% even after saying core deposits have increased since March and confirming it’s in talks with several potential investors. Western Alliance also pared losses, but was down 39% despite its denial that the firm is exploring strategic options including a possible sale of all or part of its business.

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“Obviously a rough day today — we’re having the latest flare-up in what is slowly becoming a crisis of confidence in the regional-banking sector here in the United States,” said Jim Smigiel, chief investment officer at SEI. “We have recommended additional cash allocations out of equities for our clients.”

That said, Smigiel and a myriad of market observers don’t see the parallels being made in what we’re currently going through versus the 2008 financial crisis.

“It’s not a credit crisis, it’s an interest-rate issue,” he noted. “This is just rates have gone up so quickly the valuation of their asset book has declined.”

The recent collapse of First Republic Bank and a raging selloff in regional banks has also bolstered fears of a lending crunch that could spur a hard landing. For firms with shakier finances that often borrow money not only through banks but also with high-yield debt, signs of stress in the system may inflict even more pain.

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Hard Time

“Companies with the highest level of leverage aren’t necessarily the most prudent ones, so if we see a pullback in bank lending, they become harder to underwrite,” said Max Gokhman, head of MosaiQ Investment Strategy at Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions. “Investors recognize that if rates go down, they may not necessarily go down for the most-indebted companies and they may have a hard time getting additional financing when they need it most.”

That’s a tricky scenario for a central bank that just raised rates to the highest level since 2007, signaled a potential pause as early as June, but refrained from hinting at a pivot at this stage.

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Bond traders eyeing the deepening rout in US regional bank shares concluded the Fed is likely to reverse this week’s quarter-point interest-rate increase by July in response to tightening credit conditions.

Swap contracts linked to Fed meeting dates collapsed, with the July rate briefly falling to 4.82%, a quarter point below the 5.08% level where the effective fed funds rate is likely to settle as a result of Wednesday’s increase in the target band to 5%-5.25%. The June swap rate at lows around 5% reflected one-in-four odds of a cut as soon as June.

Jobs report

Traders are also gearing up for Friday’s key jobs report, following data that showed applications for US unemployment benefits rose by the most in six weeks while continuing claims fell. Even as the labor market starts showing some weakness, it’s still cooling at a much slower pace than other economic indicators in the wake of an aggressive tightening campaign by the Fed.

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“In our view, the Fed is very unlikely to cut unless there’s severe financial stress and/or a recession is imminent — stocks likely go down in both scenarios,” said Chris Senyek at Wolfe Research.

Meantime, fears about a political standoff over the US debt limit are driving up rates on short-term Treasury bills, pushing them over 10-year yields by the most in at least three decades.

The risk that Congress will fail to act drove 3-month Treasury bill yields to over 5.25%, with them hitting as much as about 2 full percentage points over 10-year yields on Thursday. That’s the most since the data compiled by Bloomberg began in 1992.

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The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.1%, the euro fell 0.4% to $1.1014, the British pound was little changed at $1.2574 and the Japanese yen rose 0.4% to 134.15 per dollar.

🍝 For the dinner table debate:

The latest ‘Future of Work’ report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) notes that while tight labor markets prevail in high-income countries, low- and lower-middle-income countries continue to experience higher unemployment than they did before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Against this backdrop, the WEF details that the energy or green transition, meeting ESG targets and the relocation of global supply chains are the sectors that will be driving the most new job creation over the next five years.

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Due to these macro trends, as well as the advance of technology and digitization, and the adoption of Artificial Intelligence, among the jobs that will grow in demand by 2027 are: artificial intelligence and machine learning specialist, sustainability specialist, business intelligence analyst, information security analyst and fintech engineers, among others.

Leidys Becerra, a content producer at Bloomberg Línea, and Rita Nazareth of Bloomberg News, contributed to this report.