Looking ahead, economists anticipate the Brazilian economy will shrink 3.19% this year and 2.04% in 2016, the first back-to-back recession since 1931.
“There is no room for any growth in the coming quarters,” Andre Perfeito, chief economist at Gradual Investimentos, told Bloomberg. “The situation is really, really bad.”
With the backdrop of ongoing concerns, more aggressive traders may turn to a bearish or inverse ETF option to capitalize on continued weakness in Brazilian equities. For instance, the ProShares UltraShort MSCI Brazil Capped ETF (NYSEArca: BZQ) takes the -2x or two times inverse of the daily performance of the MSCI Brazil 25/50 Index, which acts as the underlying index for EWZ. BZQ has increased 19.8% over the past week and surged 76.9% year-to-date.
iShares MSCI Brazil Capped ETF
For more information on Brazil, visit our Brazil category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.