Volatility in Brazilian equities is pretty much unprecedented right now, as we see the largest ETF in the segment, EWZ (iShares MSCI Brazil, Expense Ratio 0.61%) swinging between up 6% and up 10% all in inside of the first hour of U.S. trading, and this is after about a 3% gain last Friday.
Volume is increasing, and intraday daily ranges are widening lately in not only Brazil, but Emerging Markets linked funds that have sizable allocations to Brazil, so we expect steady and staying increases in trading in leveraged long and short products in the Brazil equity segment.
BRZU (Direxion Daily Brazil Bull 3X Shares, Expense Ratio 0.95%) trading volume for example has launched like a rocket, with the ETF running into some resistance this morning at its 200 day MA. Sadly, the leveraged Bear product here was de-listed recently by Direxion, BRZS, so we cannot track it anymore.
We also watch UBR (ProShares Ultra MSCI Brazil, Expense Ratio 0.95%) and BZQ (ProShares UltraShort MSCI Brazil, Expense Ratio 0.95%) which have seen large upticks in activity recently with traders looking to capitalize
on the huge short term volatility in Brazilian markets.
EWZ is still the unprecedented giant in the Brazil equity space, dominating the space actually in terms of AUM ($5.07 billion currently), dwarfing the next largest fund BRF (Market Vectors Brazil Small Cap, Expense Ratio
0.60%) with $124 million in AUM, and the newer, lesser known “Small Cap version of EWZ” listed by iShares, EWZS (iShares MSCI Brazil Small Cap, Expense Ratio 0.62%) having attracted about $32.5 million since inception in 2010.