The iShares MSCI Brazil Capped exchange-traded fund (EWZ) is down 1.4% today, despite a data release showing a positive jump in consumer confidence this month.
Shares of telecom Oi (OIBR) are down nearly 7% after the Brazilian government named a judicial administrator for its bankruptcy, filed on June 20 after debt restructuring talks with creditors failed. Companhia Energetica de Minas Gerais (CIG) is down 5.5% and Ambev (ABEV) is down nearly 1%. But bank names are higher, including Banco do Brasil (BBAS3.Brazil) and Banco Bradesco(BBDO), which is up nearly 8% today.
Michael Shaoul of Marketfield Asset Management observes:
“Brazil’s Consumer Confidence Index rose strongly in July to 76.7 (September 2005 = 100), its strongest reading since February 2015. The Expectations Index continue to lead the headline index, reaching 85.3, its best reading since December 2014. Together the two indices are tracing a familiar pattern seen in numerous other cycles whereby confidence collapses around the time that a local equity market makes its cycle low and then starts to increase in response to the surprising recovery in local equity prices.
Although confidence has increased markedly since the start of the year it remains unusually depressed. The 11 year history of the index means that we do not have data that goes back to the last domestic crisis in 2001/2 but our sense is that confidence could increase considerably from the current level before it represented a headwind for local asset markets.”