Colombia’s peso rose to its highest level in two weeks as improved demand for European bonds eased concerns that the region might stall a global economic recovery.
The currency gained 0.3 percent to 1,802.75 per dollar at 11:15 a.m. New York time, from 1,807.48 yesterday. It earlier touched 1,799.55, its strongest intraday level since Aug. 23. The peso has gained 13 percent so far this year, the best performance among all currencies tracked by Bloomberg.
Demand rose at a Portuguese bond sale, and Poland’s auction of five-year debt attracted the strongest bids since 2008. The MSCI World Index of shares rose 0.6 percent while the Dollar Index, which Intercontinental Exchange Inc. uses to track the greenback against the currencies of six major trading partners including the yen and euro, slipped 0.5 percent.
“I see a weaker dollar, and the peso is pretty much trading in line with that,” Katia Diaz, an economist at 4Cast Inc. in New York, said today in a telephone interview. The local market “has been put on hold by the central bank because we’re waiting for an intervention to come for three weeks now, so the peso has been trading in line with what’s going on outside in global markets.”
Central bank chief Jose Dario Uribe said Aug. 20 that the bank will buy dollars in the spot market to ease gains in the peso when “appropriate.”
The yield on the benchmark 11 percent bonds due 2020 fell six basis points, or 0.06 percentage point, to 7.19 percent, according to Colombia’s stock exchange. The bond’s price rose 0.439 centavo to 126.251 centavos per peso.