Today’s Focus
Traders are waking up to a market that is pricing a pause. The August Copom decision, now barely three weeks away, has the selic rate frozen at 14.25% in the minds of most Focus-survey respondents, yet the live debate beneath that surface is whether the central bank’s own inflation projections—still above the 4.5% tolerance ceiling—will force it to keep the rate there deep into Q4.
Goldman Sachs has already shifted its call, with economist Alberto Ramos pencilling in a restart of cuts only from the fourth quarter and lifting his year-end Selic forecast to 14.00%. XP, seeing the same disinflation breeze that last week’s IPCA surprise carried, is betting on one more 25bp reduction in August.
Today’s retail sales print at noon is the data point that could tip this argument. The consensus is for a 0.5% monthly rise, clawing back from a dire -1.5% fall, and anything substantially softer would arm the doves while a strong number would validate the pragmatic wait-and-see stance that currently dominates the committee’s rhetoric.
The currency board tells the same story of waiting. The real at 5.07 to the dollar is a pure carry play, supported by the high Selic but giving no fresh signals of its own; it is the August Copom minutes, not today’s opening, that will define whether that carry premium contracts or expands.
