INTERACTIVE | While Argentina makes the market nervous, Cencosud's short sales are up 64%

The evolution of short positions so far this year The month reveals that the market is looking anxiously at Cencosud and that local tables point out that the key lies in its heavy exposure to Argentina.

Short sales are transactions that allow an investor to sell shares of those who do not own, with the intention of making a profit with the decline in the price of badets, which "borrows" from someone else.

According to the figures of the Stock Exchange of Santiago, this morning the stock of sales In the short term, Horst Paulmann's portfolio rose from $ 5,818 million to $ 9,535 million between late June and last Friday, an increase of $ 3,716.8 million (US $ 5.6 million).

equivalent to a 63.9% increase in a little more than It appears from the marketplace that this rise is probably related to the company's relationship with Argentina, at a time when the rate of currency exchange is still subject to volatility on the other side of the mountain range. [19659005] So far this year, the Argentine peso has fallen 48.5% against the dollar, currently trading at 27.61 pesos for one dollar. The Trans-African currency has also lost ground at the expense of the Chilean peso, currency in which Cencosud reports: since the end of last year, the Argentine peso has fallen 27.58% against the local currency, to 23 $ 98. ] From MCC, the local investment director, Sebastián Vives, believes that Chilean investors anticipate the fact that the weaknesses of the neighboring country and Brazil – the two economies to which the retailer is highly exposed – have had in the last line "Brazil should show some weakness because of the exchange rate, and Argentina too, so it is very likely that the market speculates that the results may have been affected by the effect of the exchange rate" , says the Executive

Of BTG Pactual, the brokerage president, Hugo Rubio, agrees with the diagnosis. "People probably use it as a cover for Argentina," he explains

. Cencosud is not the only company very exposed to Argentina. In addition, according to Bloomberg figures is not even the most exposed Chilean company in the neighboring country: in terms of percentage of revenue from operations in this country last year, AES Gener is the most exposed with 35%, followed by Embotelladora Andina, with 29%. Third place is Jumbo holding, with 24.9%.

Now, one factor that could explain why Cencosud's short sales increase more than those of other companies exposed to the Trans-African country is the nature of the business. "Their business is much more indebted," says Rubio of BTG, while demand in companies such as Andina and CCU, which also operate in Argentina, "is more inelastic."

Yes, because of Cencosud's high level of liquidity, disarming short positions – that is, when paper provisions materialize – would not necessarily affect the price of the paper. # 39; action. According to Vives, MCC, the effect could "not be significant", depending on the volume of transactions.

Moreover, note the executive, it could even boost the price of these papers. "When the short selling stock is high, one might start to suspect that the bad news is already embedded in the price and that any good news is that short sales are beginning to close," says Vives. In July, Cencosud went from the third position with the shortest positions to the first: with 14.4 million US dollars in shares, it exceeded the 11.6 million US dollars of Banco de Chile and 7, US $ 4 million CAP