Argentine stocks fell on Friday as investors repositioned portfolios ahead of a quarterly change in the composition of the blue chip index, while bonds ended roughly steady, traders said. The MerVal index of 16 leading stocks dropped 1.13 percent to close at 2,190.87 points, ending June with losses of 2.3 percent.
Traders said the market was also influenced by declines in US stocks. The Dow Jones industrial average ended down 0.10 percent on Friday. "The session's selectivity was due to the MerVal's new profile and the volatility was due to the US market," said Ruben Pascuali, a trader at Mayoral Bursatil brokerage.
The stock exchange's regulatory body announced after the market close that the number of companies listed on the MerVal will rise to 21 during the third quarter, based on the level of trading activity among those shares in the last six months.
Trade volume on the broad stock market totalled a robust 128 million pesos ($41.2 million), and of active shares, 42 advanced, 31 declined, and 11 were unchanged. The session's biggest loser was entertainment group Commercial del Plata, whose shares fell 3.4 percent to 0.45 peso a share.
Bond prices ended mixed after rising earlier in the session, closing just 0.3 percent higher on average. The Par bond in pesos rose 1.7 percent on the Buenos Aires stock exchange, while the Par bond in dollars fell 1.9 percent in over-the-counter trade.
Argentine bond prices fell about 5.5 percent over the course of June, due to concerns about tight local energy supplies and their effect on economic growth, as well as competition from higher-yielding US Treasury notes.
The peso currency ended flat at 3.1025/3.1050 units per dollar in informal trade between foreign exchange houses. In formal interbank trade, where the central bank buys dollars nearly every day to keep the peso from appreciating, the currency slipped 0.08 percent to 3.0900/3.0925 pesos per dollar.
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