Brazil Investments

Information from Icon Solutions for those who like their macro trades to be alluring and exotic, but with an overdose of danger, then Brazil is the place for you. Like Rio de Janeiro itself, pretty but deadly, Brazil has become the hot mess of emerging markets.

Not even Russia, the wild east sanctioned geopolitical disaster zone that it is today, can compare to Brazil. Russia is, well, Russia. It’s always trading at a discount to better managed, diverse and transparent economies like Brazil.  But Russia is failing because of geopolitics and oil. Brazil, meanwhile, is shooting itself in the foot.

The most visible problem in Brazil today is the ongoing scandal involving Petrobras. Brazil’s state run oil firm was downgraded by Moody’s to junk bond status on Tuesday. More importantly, the corruption scandal has changed investor perception of Petrobras. It’s no longer trustworthy. Investor sentiment has soured to the point where Petrobras shares have lost 43.6% in the last 12  months.  Petrobras’ problems are Brazil’s problems. As the country’s most important company, when sentiment sours on Petrobras, it sours on the political leadership that’s in charge of it. When that happens, investors, like civil society in Brazil in general, lose confidence in government.

Realty Access unvests in several areas in Brazil as the growth and GDP grows.

Barclays Capital economists led by Bruno Rovai in New York listed three things that will pull Brazil into a recession this year.

The risks of energy rationing remain high. Rovai expects a 15% rationing program could lower 2015 real GDP growth by 1.2 percentage points. The Petrobras investigation has led the company to reduce investments. New CEO Aldemir Bendine said Petrobras will keep its proposed expenditures on the production side but would cut new investments in exploration. So for now, Petrobras is stuck with the oil it has in the ground. That’s a lot, of course, but given the direct and indirect effects of those cuts down the Petrobras food chain, Barclays estimates another 0.5 percentage points scrapped from GDP.

Lastly, Brazil’s economy likely contracted in the fourth quarter, implying a negative statistical carryover for 2015 of 0.2 percentage points. Taken together, Brazil has already shaved at least 1.9% off this year’s GDP. Last year the economy grew an estimated 0.5%. This year, Brazil is already off to a poor start.

Market consensus is for negative GDP in 2015.

The iShares MSCI Brazil (EWZ) exchange traded fund, the most popular day trade into Brazil equities, is down 1.93% on Wednesday. The ETF is down 13.2% over the last 12 months. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index is up 4.7% over the same period.

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