The Month Everything Moved in Colombia

I’ve spent thirty-one days watching the same pattern repeat across four different markets, and when that happens, I stop calling it coincidence. In Abelardo de la Espriella’s first full month in office, the dollar fell, the Colombian stock market rose, bitcoin had its best August in almost two years, and the central bank is gearing up for a September 30 decision that will say more about this government than any inauguration speech. If you’re only watching one of these four things, you’re missing the full story.

What actually happened this month

Let’s start with what’s real, not the rhetoric. The COLCAP closed August with a year-to-date gain of 17.27% — the region’s second-best stock index, behind only Peru — with Ecopetrol up 42.25% and three straight months of gains. The dollar closed the month at $3,205.23 COP, still far below the nearly $5,000 it touched in January 2023. And bitcoin, which many were writing off in July, rose 23.76% in August — its best month since November 2024 — and is holding that gain above all its relevant moving averages. Meanwhile, the new finance minister, Miguel Gómez Martínez, said flatly that “the party is over” and that the government “has to tighten its belt” — he inherited a fiscal deficit of 6.4% of GDP, nearly double the historical average, and debt at 61% of GDP, the highest in the country’s recent history. That austerity message, whether you like it or not, is the first time in years a Colombian government has said it this bluntly in its first month.

What nobody’s telling you

Here’s the tension nobody’s connecting: announcing austerity and executing it are two different things, and this government has already spent its first month demonstrating the gap between them. August’s earthquake forced an economic emergency declaration with a $30 trillion COP reconstruction bill — right as the official message was “tighten your belt.” And the response to drone attacks in Cesar and the public-order instability that marked even inauguration day triggered a security response plan that also costs money, and that we still don’t know how it gets financed without breaking the fiscal promise. I’m not saying those decisions are wrong — reconstruction and security are usually necessary spending — I’m saying the real test of this government’s fiscal credibility wasn’t August’s speech: it’s whether the central bank, on September 30, finds enough real discipline that it doesn’t have to keep raising a rate that’s already at 11.25% and that Fedesarrollo projects closing the year at 11.75%.

The real opportunity (and how not to miss it)

This is where judgment matters more than enthusiasm. The temptation is to read these four moves — cheaper dollar, stocks up, crypto up, government talking discipline — as a single “everything’s fine” narrative and bet accordingly with one big play. Don’t. These are four stories with different logics that happen to point the same direction today for partially independent reasons, and that doesn’t last forever. The real opportunity isn’t “buy everything” — it’s using this window of relative calm to do what almost nobody does when markets are quiet: review your exposure, take profits where they already exist (Ecopetrol and ETB are sitting on gains that rarely repeat), and decide in advance what you’ll do if, on September 30, the central bank confirms real spending didn’t match the austerity talk and raises the rate again. That date, not the month that just ended, is the real exam.

The question I keep asking myself — and leave with you — isn’t whether this government talks a good game on fiscal discipline. It’s whether you have the judgment to tell a speech from an execution before the market confirms it for you the hard way.

If you want to follow this story as it moves, not a month later — the Daily Briefing covers it every morning, with the number and the why, no filler.

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