* Peru’s sol near record low * Mexican, Chilean pesos worst weekly performers * Brazil’s real sole weekly gainer (Recasts with Chilean peso, updates prices) By Susan Mathew and Ambar Warrick June 18 (Reuters) – Chile’s peso slipped to its lowest level this year, while Mexico’s currency hit a 13-week low as hawkish comments from a Federal Reserve official pushed up the dollar and hit commodity markets. The Chilean peso slumped 1.4%, leading losses across Latin America as copper prices headed for their worst week since March 2020. Concerns over Chinese caps on prices also weighed on prices. World no.2 copper producer Peru’s sol also slipped 0.9% after hitting a record low of 3.9826 on Thursday, as investors awaited the results of the country’s hotly contested presidential elections. Mexico’s peso fell 0.9% and extended losses to a sixth straight session – its longest such streak since February. It is set to post its worst week in nine months, and was also the worst performing Latam currency this week along with the Chilean peso, with both units set for a 3.6% loss. The dollar rally got a new lease on life after Federal Reserve official James Bullard said inflation was stronger than anticipated and saw rate increases beginning next year to contain inflation. That, combined with investors positioning for Mexico’s central bank meeting next week, was pressuring the peso, said Wilson Ferrarezi, an economist at TS Lombard. Ferrarezi said the Mexican central bank “has been, in relative terms, less hawkish than for instance Brazil’s Banco Central. They seem to see the inflationary pressures in Mexico as largely transitory.” Brazil’s central bank this week sent a strongly hawkish message, pushing the real to one-year highs. On Friday the currency fell 0.8%, but was still the only EM currency among major peers across the board set to mark gains this week. Declining oil prices also weighed on the Mexican peso as well as on fellow crude exporter Colombia’s currency, which lost 1.1% Most main stock indexes in Latam slipped, with the MSCI’s index of regional stocks falling 0.8%, tracking similar falls on Wall Street indexes. But Brazil’s Bovespa was supported by power utility Eletrobras, shares in which surged as much as 10% after a bill on its long-pending privatisation was approved by the Senate overnight. Average yields on Latin American local currency bonds have risen 13 basis points in June as of Thursday’s close, compared to a 5 bps rise across all emerging markets, according to data from JPMorgan’s GBI-EM index. Key Latin American stock indexes and currencies: Latest Daily % change MSCI Emerging Markets 1359.69 -0.23 MSCI LatAm 2592.78 -0.82 Brazil Bovespa 128390.52 0.26 Mexico IPC 50326.90 0.25 Chile IPSA 4290.04 -0.93 Argentina MerVal 65252.09 -1.788 Colombia COLCAP 1248.93 0.01 Currencies Latest Daily % change Brazil real 5.0644 -0.79 Mexico peso 20.5920 -0.87 Chile peso 748.05 -1.36 Colombia peso 3766 -1.06 Peru sol 3.9498 -0.86 Argentina peso 95.3700 0.00 (interbank) (Reporting by Susan Mathew and Ambar Warrick in Bengaluru; Editing by Sujata Rao, Alistair Bell and Giles Elgood)
