A surprising second place showing by Aecio Neves Sunday in Brazil’s national election, one that will force an Oct. 26 runoff with President Dilma Rousseff, has exchange traded funds tracking Brazilian equities soaring Monday.
Led by the iShares MSCI Brazil Capped ETF (NYSEArca: EWZ), which is up nearly 7% on volume that has already eclipsed the 90-day trailing average of almost 22 million shares, nine of the top-10 non-leveraged ETFs to this point in Monday’s session are either Brazil-specific funds or ETFs with significant exposure to stocks in Latin America’s largest economy.
Neves, nearly left for dead weeks ago amid a surge by Marina Silva, now looks the part of credible challenger to Rousseff. Viewed as the most pro-market candidate of the three, “Neves has pledged to tame inflation that has exceeded the midpoint of the government’s target for 48 months and said he would name former central bank President Arminio Fraga as his finance minister to regain investor confidence,” report Denyse Godoy and Julia Leite for Bloomberg.
Silva finished third and will not advance to the Oct. 26 runoff. Under Brazilian law, a candidate needed to capture at least 50% of the vote Sunday to avert the runoff. [Brazil ETF Extends Election Rally]
Monday’s rally for Brazil stocks and ETFs comes at a pivotal time as EWZ, which had spent the bulk of this year trailing only the WisdomTree India Earnings Fund (NYSEArca: EPI) for top honors among the four major BRIC single-country ETFs, joined the Market Vectors Russia ETF (NYSEArca: RSX) in entering a bear market after tumbling 19.4% last month. [Brazil, Russia ETFs Near Bear Markets]
The lesson from the September slides of Brazil ETFs is that much of those tumbles was caused by Rousseff gaining momentum while Silva faltered, indicating that today’s Neves-induced ebullience could be short-lived if upcoming polls show Rousseff widening her lead over her reform-minded challenger.
One stock that is loving the idea of Neves presidency is Petrobras (NYSE: PBR). Brazil’s state-run oil giant is up 14.3% on volume that is already double the daily average at this writing. Two Petrobras securities combine for 11.3% of EWZ’s weight. The stock has been the worst-performing major oil stock in the world since Rousseff took power in January 2011. [Petrobras Plagues Brazil ETFs]
Petrobras is also a top-10 holding in the iShares Latin American 40 ETF (NYSEArca: ILF), iShares MSCI BRIC ETF (NYSEArca: BKF) and the Guggenheim BRIC ETF (NYSEArca: EEB), all of which are also among the top-10 ETFs Monday.
Some investors were not shy about betting on either Neves or Silva forcing a runoff Sunday as EWZ hauled in $137.3 million in new assets last week. EWZ, the largest and most heavily traded Brazil ETF added $908.5 million in new assets during the third quarter.
iShares MSCI Brazil Capped ETF
Tom Lydon’s clients own shares of ILF.