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The first tightening of 2021 — appetite at 94 and conviction stuck at 50

Episode

The extreme

Begin with the contradiction, not the number. In March 2021, three of the house's gauges told incompatible stories in the same month: flow appetite spiked to the top of the scale, the sector structure pulled back, and the underlying mood went nowhere. And there was one detail no one wanted to fit into the euphoria — it was also the month of the year's first tightening, when the Selic left the 2.0% floor that had held since the end of 2020. Appetite was screaming euphoria precisely as the cost of money began to rise. In numbers: the Perene Risk Index jumped from 27.7 to 94.2 — the widest swing of the series — while the intermarket eased from 65.01 to 58.77 and Ânima barely moved, from 48.0 to 50.1. Selic at 2.75%, IPCA of 0.93%, the dollar at R$ 5.6461.

What happened next

The appetite that broke the ceiling did not hold. Three months on, in June, the Perene Risk had given back almost all of it — back to 31.3 — and the tightening pressed ahead: the Selic was already at 4.25%. The conviction that March had kept contained took a cruel detour before capitulating: it rose to euphoria in May, with Ânima at 84.6, and only then collapsed. By September, six months after the extreme, mood was at the bottom of the scale, at 9.4, with the Selic at 6.25% and capital fleeing into the house. Twelve months later, in March 2022, the Selic hit 11.75% — more than four times the level of the first tightening.

What did not happen

The ceiling of appetite did not herald a durable advance. Anyone who read 94.2 as a buy signal and held on harvested a fall: the record itself matured March 2021 over six months and measured −4.9%. Nor was the contained axis a reliable guide — Ânima did not stay parked at 50; it spiked into euphoria and only then caved. None of the three readings served as a stable compass. And the first tightening was not a one-off adjustment: it became a cycle that more than quintupled the Selic in a year — from the 2.0% floor to 11.75%.

The honest verdict

The reading of extreme appetite captured the direction — the deterministic verdict classified March 2021 as a band hit — but on a shallow base and with a negative return inside the range. The lesson is uncomfortable: flow appetite at the ceiling, in the very month the tightening begins, measures enthusiasm, not durability. Price runs ahead; conviction rarely follows it at the same speed.

Continue reading: The money that fled inward · Capital before confidence · The first rate cut →

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Characters: Structure (intermarket) · Flow (risk appetite) · Mood · Dollar