Brazil ETF Products

One of the best performing Emerging Markets in the past decade was Brazil due to their heavy exposure to commodities and natural resources. Therefore, several Brazil focused ETFs have come to market in recent years but the original EWZ is still the largest and most heavily traded Brazilian fund!

EWZ - iShares MSCI Brazil Index ETF was established 7/10/2000 making it the oldest as well as the largest Brazil ETF. It's mandate is to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of publicly traded securities in the Brazilian market, as measured by the MSCI Brazil index.   

It's Top 10 holdings make up over 61% of the fund with PetroBras being the largest holding.  In fact EWZ holds just over 10.91% in PetroBras Preferred stock and 8.85% in PetroBras Common for a nearly 20% combined weighting. 

Annual Expense Ratio = .61% (61 Basis Points)

Since Brazil has benefited from the 21st century commodity boom, EWZ has outperformed the S&P 500 by such a wide margin that it's hard to tell the S&P 500 has actually moved. You can see by the chart that EWZ underperforms the S&P 500 during down turns but dramatically out performs when conditions improve.  In a 5 month period from May to October EWZ shed about 70% of it's value erasing 3 years of dramatic gains.

EWZ Performance Since Inception VS the S&P 500

Chart begins on the first trading date of EWZ
 
 

BRAQ - The Global X Brazil Consumer ETF is designed to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Solactive Brazil Consumer Index. This ETF focuses on consumer oriented businesses in Brazil and began trading 7/08/2010.  It is sponsored by GlobalX Funds which also sponsors midcap and financial Brazil ETFs.

Annual Expense Ratio = .77% (77 Basis Points)

This fund is quite small with currently only $33.5 million in assets and trades about 40,000 shares per day.

Initial performance was strong with BRAQ handily outperforming EWZ while the emerging markets were strong, but now that they have weakened it appears the performance gap is closing.  We will have to let more time accumulate before we can truly see how these funds perform against one another.

BRAQ Performance Since Inception

Chart begins on the first trading day of BRAQ - 7/08/2010

BRXX EGS INDXX Brazil Infrastructure ETF is designed to provide investment results that generally correspond performance of the Indxx Brazil Infrastructure Index less fees. It contains 30 stocks that are involved in building and maintaining infrastructure within Brazil. This fund is relatively new as well with an inception date of 2/04/2010 and is sponsored by EG Shares.

Annual Expense Ratio = ..85% (85 Basis Points) Note:  Gross Expenses are 1.39% but are capped at .85% until 7/29/2011.

BRXX recently had net assets of about $58 Million with average daily trading volume of 45,000 shares per day.

Performance since inception was about inline with EWZ until the last couple months when it has held up better.

Performance of BRXX Since Inception VS EWZ

 
Chart begins on BRXX first day of trading Feb 24, 2010

BRAZ - Global X Brazil Mid Cap ETF is designed to to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Solactive Brazil Mid Cap Index. It focuses on mid-sized companies that are based or primarily operate in Brazil. It began trading on June 21, 2010 and appearsedto have a slight advantage over EWZ until the recent downturn.  We need to develop longer track records on all these funds in order to really compare them properly.

Annual Expense Ratio = .69% (69 Basis Points)

Recently BRAZ has net assets of about $30 Million with average daily trading volume of approximately 30,000 shares which is acceptable considering it's a specialized fund with a limited track record.

Performance Of BRAZ Since Inception VS EWZ

Chart begins the first trading date of BRAZ - June 21, 2010

BRAF - The Global X Brazil Financial ETF is designed to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Solactive Brazil Financials Index. This ETF focuses on the financial sector within Brazil and began trading 7/29/2010.  It is also sponsored by GlobalX Funds which offers several specialized Brazil ETFs.

Annual Expense Ratio = .77% (77 Basis Points)

This fund is very small with currently less than $10 million in assets and trading about 10,000 shares per day.

Based on it's brief trading history, it appears that BRAF outperforms EWZ slightly when the market is strong and under-performs when the market is weak. 

BRAF Performance Since Inception