Brazilian equities are bucking the trend in today’s global equity sell-off, with flagship ETF EWZ (iShares MSCI Brazil, Expense Ratio 0.61%) trading with a $50 handle earlier during the session for the first time since last Fall, and interestingly as we head into the World Cup action tomorrow.
In spite of impressive quarterly performance however in Brazil, the needle has barely budged in terms of asset inflows in EWZ, taking in approximately $17 million year to date, which, for a $4.8 billion fund, might as well be considered flat growth entirely.
This said, we have recently seen some downside nibbling in puts in EWZ in the face of recent strength there, with October 48 puts trading for example. EWZ remains the largest Brazil equity focused ETF by a mile, with the second largest fund being BRF (Market Vectors Brazil Small Cap, Expense Ratio 0.60%), which notably saw larger trading volume yesterday and is also seeing additional price strength in today’s session.
This fund has actually seen net outflows year to date, and it is only a $165 million fund. The spread between asset sizes in these two funds being #1 and #2 in the space is actually quite notable, and there are eleven other ETPs in the space that are even smaller than BRF.
In short, there seems to be a ton of potential given the impressive, and ongoing run in Brazilian based stocks for these smaller ETPs to grow considerably and in short order.
Furthermore, if the recent EWZ put buyers are evidence of some market participants having a potentially bearish opinion on Brazil, there is no reason that BRZS (Direxion Daily Brazil Bear 3X Shares, Expense Ratio 1.10%) should not become an instantly recognizable name, at least for opportunistic traders and hedgers, as this fund remains rather small at about $3.2 million in AUM.