A long weekend that allows no rest

By Carlos Fontana
Columnist for Ámbito Financiero

It is very curious that stocks opened the session with a slight rise in the last four sessions and then took up the bearish trend. On Friday, this was revealed by a 0.32% increase which all of a sudden turned into a 3.25% fall. Finally, prices recovered by the end of the session and Merval closed at 0.78% to 369.81 points. PC headed the "recovery" and even though it was not one of the stocks that rose the most, it was the main responsible - with 6.5 million- of the $31 million in trading volume. Unlike previous sessions, though falls dominated the session, the proportion was reduced to 29 bearish stocks and 11 bullish stocks. Spanish banks were the leaders of the falls (Francés -6% and Santander -5.83%). The outstanding stocks were Ceco, which soared 7%, Molinos, 6% and Acíndar and Siderar (iron and steel companies). Basically, these stocks had posted sharp falls in the previous sessions.

Hope or premonition?

The previous week was the worst week since the new administration came to office (since 1999, to be more precise). Despite the 0.97% improvement experienced by the most traded stocks on Monday, the beating they received during the four following days was such that Merval index ended up losing 8.06% in the week and 11.27% so far this year. After having a run of bad luck and in view of the improvement by midday on Friday, several people said that the market has hit rock bottom. Others, in contrast, claimed that the drops were the result of the need to cover positions and the fear, on the part of sellers and buyers, of running some kind of risk during the weekend.