Alguns analistas e comentadores mais conservadores, sarcasticamente apelidam de dinheiro mágico as mais valias realizadas em mercados de futuros e outras transacções puramente financeiras, talvez tenham alguma razão.
Recentemente, na semana passada em 20 de Maio, um gestor de fundos de Wall Street prestou um depoimento na CMVM yankee que parece ter mexido um bocado com o sistema. A noticia suscitou alguma reacção, a crer no Jornal de Negócios de hoje.
O tal depoimento fazia-se acompanhar duma referencia ao papel das entidades que ele apelidou de “Index Speculators”, basicamente Fundos Soberanos e Fundos de Pensões. Um pequeno extracto do documento de 19 páginas:
“ Commodities prices have increased more in the aggregate over the last five years than at any other time in U.S. history. We have seen commodity price spikes occur in the past as a result of supply crises, such as during the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo.
But today, unlike previous episodes, supply is ample: there are no lines at the gas pump and there is plenty of food on the shelves. If supply is adequate – as has been shown by others who have testified before this committee – and prices are still rising, then demand must be increasing. But how do you explain a continuing increase in demand when commodity prices have doubled or tripled in the last 5 years?
What we are experiencing is a demand shock coming from a new category of participant in the commodities futures markets: Institutional Investors. Specifically, these are Corporate and Government Pension Funds, Sovereign Wealth Funds, University Endowments and other Institutional Investors. Collectively, these investors now account on average for a larger share of outstanding commodities futures contracts than any other market participant.
These parties, who I call Index Speculators, allocate a portion of their portfolios to “investments” in the commodities futures market, and behave very differently from the traditional speculators that have always existed in this marketplace. I refer to them as “Index” Speculators because of their investing strategy: they distribute their allocation of dollars across the 25 key commodities futures according to the popular indices – the Standard & Poors – Goldman Sachs Commodity Index and the Dow Jones – AIG Commodity Index. “
Esperamos ansiosamente pelos próximos capítulos e pelo relatório da nossa ADC, que certamente deverá trazer esta matéria mais desenvolvida. Tudo isto levanta ainda uma outra interrogação: como terão sido negociados os preços de troca de bens de consumo por petróleo na recente viagem da comitiva portuguesa à Venezuela ? A que terão sido indexados ?
Publicado por aosabordamare 
Publicado por aosabordamare 