Radar Perene / Archive / episode

The 58-point swing of December 2012 — the appetite that came back too fast

◦ Written under index methodology v1 (in effect until 15 Jul 2026). The current series is v2 — readings quoted here may differ from those shown today. See the methodology.

Episode

The extreme

November's entrenched fear evaporated in a single turn of the calendar. The money that had been hiding in defensives came running back to the sectors that breathe with the economy — and went straight to the two corners where aversion had run deepest: the banks and raw materials. But a second gauge refused to confirm. In numbers: the Perene Risk Index leapt from 20.6 to 78.6 in a single month, one of the widest arcs in the archive, with the financials crossing from disfavor back into favor in one of the sharpest displacements of the half-year. At the same close, the intermarket fell from 41.1 to 16.5, classified as risk_off_forte. Dollar at R$ 2.078, Selic at 7.25%.

What happened next

The turn was real, but it had a narrow address. In March 2013, three months later, the bet on the banks did not spread — it concentrated: the financials climbed into territory the archive almost never visits, while the raw materials that December had celebrated plunged below their own average. The Perene Risk Index, far from consolidating the optimism, retreated to neutral, at 53.3. And the concentration did not hold: the financial sector tumbled in April, and June already found it below average. The appetite stayed alive all year — in December 2013 the Perene Risk Index closed at 74.0 — but buying defensives, not the banks that had rekindled it.

What did not happen

The 58-point leap did not herald a broad and lasting bull market. Anyone who read the 78.6 as consolidated confidence mistook speed for conviction — the house itself noted at the close that swings this wide in a short window tend to be tactical repositioning. The dollar did not budge either, pinned at R$ 2.078, so the turn was born of internal flow, not external relief. And the intermarket marking risk_off_forte was not simply wrong: the caution it measured was the warning the euphoric headline did not give.

The honest verdict

The width of the leap was the warning. A reading that jumps 58 points in a month records a tactical reshuffling, not a change of fundamentals — and the gauge that dissented aged better than the front-page optimism. The appetite was genuine; narrow and short, too.

Continue reading: When the gauges disagree · The single bet on banks · The stimulus that did not impress →

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Characters: Cyclicals × defensives