The selloff in world markets didn’t continue Wednesday as most had mildly positive gains. The Colombian Colcap was up 0.36% following Tuesday’s brutal trading.
The market was led up by strong gains in Ecopetrol and GrupoAval, the latter of which announced its planned equity offering was more than 1.5x oversubscribed. With this offering, GrupoAval plans to raise roughly USD $1.1 billion. Another foreign firm announced today that they had begun the listing process by filing papers with the Colombian Stock Exchange, Houston American Energy, an oil exploration company based out of Houston, TX and with major operations in Colombia intends to have a local listing in about 6 months.
The S&P500 was up ever so slightly in trading today, it eked out a 0.02% gain to close at 1,314.41. Markets in Europe and Asia performed well while the Brazilian BOVESPA was again lower by 0.61%. The FED reported today that the economy in the U.S. is expanding at a moderate pace and they are seeing improvements in the labor markets. Additionally, retail sales saw a 0.4% increase in March and JP Morgan announced a 67% increase in 1st quarter earnings.
The peso closed little changed today at 1,819.05.
Oil picked up a bit of losses from yesterday and closed at $107.38/barrel. Coffee was a loser on the day as it shed more than 3% off its value, copper, wheat and cotton also suffered less than impressive sessions in the commodities markets.