In news that is about as surprising as the weatherman saying it is cold in Chicago in January, the iShares MSCI Brazil Capped ETF (NYSEArca: EWZ) along with most other U.S.-listed Brazil exchange traded funds are getting crushed Monday after President Dilma Rousseff narrowly defeated challenger Senator Aecio Neves in Sunday’s runoff election.
In the closest election in Latin America’s largest economy in nearly 30 years, Rousseff beat Neves 52% to 48%. Shares of EWZ, the largest Brazil ETFs are lower by 6.3% Monday on volume that, at this writing, has already eclipsed the daily average.
EWZ is not even the worst offender among non-leveraged Brazil ETFs. For example, the EGShares Brazil Infrastructure Index Fund (NYSEArca: BRXX) is off nearly 7% today and printed a new all-time low earlier today. The Market Vectors Brazil Small-Cap ETF (NYSEArca: BRF) and the iShares MSCI Brazil Small-Cap ETF (NYSEArca: EWZS) join BRXX, the ProShares Ultra MSCI Brazil (NYSEArca: UBR) and the Direxion Daily Brazil Bull 3x Shares (NYSEArca; BRZU) as the Brazil ETFs making new all-time lows today. [Bad Day for Brazil ETFs]
Said another way, to this point in Monday’s session, 11 ETFs have printed fresh all-time lows and five are Brazil funds.
And speaking of leveraged Brazil ETFs, with the benefit of hindsight, it now looks like a good thing that most traders did not load up on BRZU and UBR in the day’s leading up to Sunday’s vote. From Oct. 17 through Oct. 24, no money went into UBR, the double-leveraged fund, while BRZU added about $7.9 million in new assets.
That is not to say traders eschewed leverage altogether with Brazil ETFs. Last Thursday, the number outstanding options contracts in EWZ reached a record 5.6 million with traders holding roughly the same number of calls and puts, report Julia Leite and Denyse Godoy for Bloomberg.