No one was immune to the pain in world markets Thursday. The S&P50 dropped 1.89%, the Brazilian BOVESPA shed 1.82%,and the local Colombian Colcap slipped 2.10% on high volume of $191 million.
ETB and Fabricato bucked the trend as they gained 8.35% and 7.05%, respectively. However, two of the large weightings on the Colombian indices, Pacific Rubiales and Ecopetrol both had sharp declines of 4.19% and 2.38%, respectively.
Economic news was relatively morose wherever you turned today. The U.S. ran a $46.3 billion trade deficit in January, 15% higher than December. Additionally, expectations for China’s trade surplus in February was $4.9 billion, however actual figures were a deficit of $7.3 billion as imports picked up 19.4% and exports only increased 2.4%. In Europe, Spanish sovereign debt was downgraded by Moody’s today to AA2 on estimates that the financial restructuring in the country will cost more than the government has said.
The peso was little changed today as it closed at 1,867.75 to the dollar.
Commodities felt the worldwide selloff as well. Oil was down more than 2% to close at $102.27, and coffee led the way down giving up 5.62% today.