According to Emol, the dollar opened this Tuesday with a drop of $7.1 in Chile. As the local market reopened after Monday's holiday, it fell below $980 and traded at $975.6 selling and $975.9 buying.
To understand the movement, look at copper. Chile is the metal's largest producer, and when its price holds up, more dollars enter the country. That greater supply of foreign currency makes the dollar cheaper against the peso.
Lucas Santillán, an analyst at brokerage Capitaria, told the outlet that no significant economic indicators are on Chile's agenda for the day. As a result, he said, the market's attention is focused on mining.
The first focus is Escondida, in the Antofagasta Region, the world's largest copper mine. According to Santillán, the company presented its final offer to the supervisors and staff union during mediation, and the deadline to respond expires today.
Adding to that is the landslide that affected the open-pit area of El Teniente, Codelco's division in the O'Higgins Region, over the weekend. The analyst said the market is following both developments closely because they could affect the global copper supply.
If less copper comes out of the mines, the metal becomes scarcer and its price tends to rise. Felipe Oyarzún, an analyst at the XTB platform, said that disruptions at El Teniente and the strike at the Centinela mining company have supported copper prices in recent trading sessions.
Even so, the metal closed 0.55% lower on the London Metal Exchange, the world's main benchmark market for these products. It traded at US$6.68 per pound, compared with US$6.72 on Monday. According to Oyarzún, with little fluctuation, those levels provide "some support for the Chilean peso".
Internationally, the market is awaiting tomorrow's US CPI (consumer price index, which measures inflation). Santillán said a monthly increase of 0.6% is projected, with annual inflation expected to rise to 3.6% from the previous 3.4%.
That figure matters because higher inflation in the United States can strengthen the dollar worldwide. According to the analyst, the market is assessing whether the figure could again surprise with lower inflation than expected.
For today's session, Oyarzún expects the exchange rate to remain influenced by the dollar's global performance, US bond yields and copper, with a reference range of $970 to $980 per dollar.
