Colombia’s Year-End Signal: A Stronger Peso, A Sudden Equity Jolt, And A 2026 Risk Test

Key Points

• Colombia finished 2025 with a structurally stronger peso, but year-end thin liquidity amplified swings.
• The stock index fell, yet trading value exploded because two giant block trades dominated the tape.
• The story behind both moves is credibility versus uncertainty: steady policy signals pulled in capital, while fiscal headlines kept investors quick to de-risk.

Colombia’s markets sent a message at year-end that matters well beyond Bogotá: when a country earns credibility, money shows up, but it still leaves fingerprints.

Start with the currency. The official dollar reference for December 31 was 3,757.08 pesos, while offshore pricing early in the morning sat near 3,765.3. The previous day’s action explains the tone.

On December 30, the dollar ended around 3,757.54 in spot trading, about 50.57 pesos above that day’s reference, after ranging from roughly 3,711 to 3,800.80. Activity was heavy for a late-December session: 1,347 transactions and about US$1.592 billion traded.

The bigger driver was not a local panic. It was a classic year-end mix of hedging, position clean-up, and thinner liquidity, with global markets leaning toward the dollar after Federal Reserve minutes, as the dollar index hovered around the 98 area.

Oil, a key external anchor for Colombia, was steady near US$62 per barrel, offering support but not a decisive push. Now the surprise: equities. Colombia’s main index, the MSCI COLCAP, closed December 30 down 1.90% at 2,068.01.

That sounds routine until you see the turnover. Cash-equity trading value jumped to COP 349.365 billion, versus COP 44.222 billion the session before. The surge was not broad panic selling. It was concentrated.

Grupo Éxito printed a single 27.53 million-share block at COP 4,390. Terpel saw a 7.84 million-share block worth COP 152.336 billion.

Those two trades made the day look dramatic, even as many investors treated it as portfolio reclassification and year-end housekeeping.

The winners and losers underline the split personality. Price gainers included Bolsa Mercantil de Colombia (+2.00%), Ecopetrol (+1.36%), and Cementos Argos (P) (+0.31%), while Éxito and Terpel “won” attention on sheer flow.

The biggest decliners were Construcciones El Cóndor (-20.00%), Grupo Sura (-5.26%), Corficolombiana (-4.20%), Grupo Argos (P) (-3.46%), and Davivienda (P) (-3.27%). Offshore, the COLO Colombia ETF closed at $35.92 (-6.68%), with NAV at $35.64 and one-year net inflows near $41.78 million.

What sits beneath all this is the real story: Colombia’s central bank kept rates at 9.25% into year-end, and unemployment was reported at 7.0% in November, the lowest November reading since 2001.

Those signals attract capital. But fiscal and tax-decree headlines injected doubt, so even constructive fundamentals did not stop the market from flinching in thin conditions.

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