Brazil’s real rose to the strongest level in almost three weeks as China’s car sales surged in August and a rally in global stocks and metals prices prompted investors to buy higher-yielding assets.
The Brazilian currency climbed 0.7 percent to 1.8296 per U.S. dollar at 5:02 p.m. New York time, from 1.8426 yesterday. Earlier it touched 1.8215, the strongest level since Aug. 20. Today’s gain extended the real’s gain this year to 27 percent, the second-best performance against the dollar among 26 emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg, behind the South African rand.
“There’s a recognition that the global economy is no longer in a free-fall and it’s probably in a stabilization stage, followed by a growth stage,” Ihab Salib, who oversees $3 billion as head of international fixed-income at Federated Investments Inc., said in a telephone interview from Pittsburgh. “Everything that’s commodities-related should do well.”
The MSCI World Index of 23 developed countries advanced 1.2 percent, while the MSCI Emerging Market Index gained 1.8 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rallied 0.9 percent after U.S. markets were closed for a holiday yesterday.
China’s passenger-car sales surged a record 90 percent last month, as tax cuts and government subsidies spurred demand, bringing the nation closer to overtaking the U.S. as the world’s largest auto market.
Sales of cars, sport-utility vehicles and multipurpose vehicles rose to 858,300, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said in a statement today. China is Brazil’s biggest trading partner, accounting for about 15 percent of all Brazilian exports.
Gold Above $1,000
Gold climbed above $1,000 an ounce for the first time in six months, rising as much as 1.3 percent in New York trading. The Bloomberg Base Metals 3-Month Price Commodity Index climbed 2 percent. Copper rose 3 percent, while oil prices added 4.9 percent. Commodities account for two-thirds of Brazil’s exports.
“There’s a realization that emerging-market countries, and some of the larger and more fiscally responsible emerging countries, such as Brazil, are likely to lead us out of this rather than the U.S.,” Salib said. “The fundamentals in emerging countries look a lot better than the fundamentals in some of the developed countries.”
Brazil’s economy may contract 0.16 percent this year, less than a week-earlier estimate of a 0.3 percent drop, according to the median forecast in a Sept. 4 central bank survey of about 100 economists published today. Latin America’s largest economy will expand 4 percent in 2010, the survey showed.
In the overnight interest-rates futures market, the yield on the contract due January 2011 rose one basis point, or 0.01 percentage point, to 9.71 percent.
Fabio Alves in New York at falves3@bloomberg.net
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