Argentine stocks closed slightly lower Wednesday in uneventfully light trading.The index ended down 0.26% at 2,825.73 points in volume totaling 49.3 million Argentine pesos ($11.4 million).
Aluminum producer Aluar Aluminio Argentino SAIC (AAARF, ALUA.BA) rose 2.4% to ARS3.02. Aluar’s price fell sharply last week after it made a dividend payment out of its stock. The share price has been rising since then.
Banco Macro (BMA, BMA.BA) rose about 2.2% to ARS11.70. It was followed by Banco Frances (BFR, FRAN.BA), which rose 1.5% to ARS10.1. Steel producer Tenaris (TS, TEN.MI) rose 1.3% to ARS94.20. Shares of Tenaris were the most traded, in terms of volume, which totaled roughly $15 million.
«Nothing really interesting happened today,» said Juan Jose Vazquez, an analyst at Bull Market Brokers.
The Merval has performed pretty well so far in 2012. It’s up 14.8% since the end of 2011.
Wednesday’s trading offered a much-needed respite from that trend, the brokerage Estudio Ber said in its daily comment.
Local stocks «finally took a sane and opportune rest, taking advantage of the erratic behavior that we’re still seeing overseas,» Estudio Ber said.
The Global X FTSE Argentina 20 ETF, which tracks shares of Argentine companies listed on international markets, was barely changed at ARS11.28 in New York trading.
The price of the benchmark peso-denominated 2033 was unchanged at ARS130.50, yielding 12.6%.
The peso was unchanged on the MAE local foreign-exchange wholesale market versus ARS4.3125 in the previous session.
Last year the peso weakened 7.6% against the dollar.
-By Taos Turner, Dow Jones Newswires; 5411-4103-6728; taos.turner@dowjones.com
Source: online.wsj.com