Argentina could potentially attract $10 billion to its stock market if restrictions are lifted, reports Bloomberg

Argentina’s stock exchange called on the government to lift capital controls that caused it to become the only major Latin America market classified as “frontier,” adding the move may help lure $10 billion in foreign investment.

A requirement for international investors to deposit 30 percent of what they put in Argentina with the central bank for a year “have stopped making sense,” Adelmo Gabbi, the Buenos Aires stock exchange’s chairman, said yesterday in a speech.

Capital controls prompted MSCI Inc. to remove Argentina from its benchmark emerging-market index in June, assigning it the so-called frontier status along with the world’s least developed markets. The controls have helped Argentina avoid volatility, said President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Argentina's stock exchange, Buenos Aires
Image courtesy of Business Week

“We have to seek a rule so that the inflow of funds won’t be speculative,” she said, without elaborating.

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“The deposit requirement was imposed in 2005 and was one of the forces that allowed us to confront the brutal volatility of the markets during the crisis,” Fernandez responded yesterday in a speech at the Buenos Aires stock exchange.

Fernandez’s husband and predecessor Nestor Kirchner imposed deposit requirement in order to discourage speculators from investing in local markets after the country restructured about $104 billion in bonds...

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Disappear for 12 days and things go a bit crazy... falling Metals drag down LATAM financials --

Latin American stock markets plunged Monday, led by a slide in Brazilian and Mexican equities as prices for resources sparked a broad sell-off and growing fears about the performance of the US economy. Brazil and Mexico markets fell to their lowest level in seven and six months, while in Argentina the Merval ended at a two year record low.

In Sao Paulo, the Bovespa dropped 3.5% to 55,609.07, its third consecutive decline. Shares of the market's heaviest-weighted stock, oil giant Petrobras tumbled 4.7%. Something similar happened with Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, the world’s leading iron ore mining giant which slid 7.2%.

Click here to access the full article from Merco Press

More comprehensive updates and analysis of past weeks events and where things may be heading to come. Need to play catch up with the world after 12 days in Brazil, with limited net, tv and media I could read (my Portuguese is not the greatest)