Previously one of the most maligned single-country emerging markets exchange traded funds, the iShares MSCI Brazil Capped ETF (NYSEArca: EWZ) is on an impressive run.
The largest ETF tracking Latin America’s largest economy, EWZ is higher by nearly 13% over the past month. In the 25 trading days starting March 19 and ending April 23, EWZ has closed higher on 16 occasions. With Thursday’s close at $36.27, just 10 cents off the intraday high, EWZ finished at its highest level since late January.
EWZ’s recent rally has elicited an epic run for its triple-leveraged equivalent, the Direxion Daily Brazil Bull 3x Shares (NYSEArca: BRZU). On volume that was 77% above the daily average, BRZU surged almost 8.2% on Thursday, bring the ETF’s one month run to 39.5%. That is more than triple EWZ’s performance over the same period, indicating BRZU is doing an excellent job of delivering triple the daily returns of the MSCI Brazil 25-50 Index. [A Different View of Leveraged ETFs]
Entering Thursday, BRZU’s average daily return for the previous 30 days was 5.7%. Sitting on April gain of nearly 58%, BRZU is one of Direxion’s top-performing triple-leveraged bullish ETFs this month.
When we highlighted BRZU on April 15, we noted that since the start of the year, BRZU has seen its shares outstanding count surge 52%. Since that day, investors have poured another $3.32 billion in BRZU. [Loving Leveraged LatAm ETFs]
The ETF’s continued upside and inflows have remained steady in the wake of Direxion announcing earlier this week that BRZU is heading for a 1-for-10 reverse split, which will be effective at the open of the market on May 20, 2015, according to a statement issued by Direxion.