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Time to check up on our Lusotropicalism enjoyers.
The Brazilian Presidential election ended yesterday, featuring a run-off between Lula da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro, the son of jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro, had won the previous round. Prediction markets placed his odds of winning at roughly 80%.
But Lula ended up winning, and not without controversy.
Apparently, a Supreme Court justice, and a former personal attorney of Lula's, added two extra hours to the voting period in a last second decision. There have been claims that voting in Bolsonaro-friendly areas had already been finalized and could not been restarted. One person on X claimed "it's as if voting restarted, but only in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore". I am not sure how accurate this claim is.
Bolsonaro is not accepting the results of the election. There are calls for the election results to be annulled, especially if it turns out the extra voting period was decisive. The situation is perhaps mitigated by the fact that conservatives now control a large majority of the legislature and may be able to immediately impeach Lula and, more importantly, his judges.
Perhaps someone who understands the situation can weigh in. From my outsider's view it seems that, in Brazil, individual Supreme Court justices wield nearly unchecked power and can make last second Banana Republic type decisions like opening the polls for an extra two hours. Brazilian politics feel like American ones, just more so.
The Brazilian stock market is down by 25% overnight.
Nobody in S America could ever convince me that Democracy is better than Fascism. You see huge swaths of Brazil vote on ethnic lines. Brazil at this point probably at a minimum needs to be broken into different countries. I don’t see why White Europeans should be governed by a corrupt commie because a bunch of negros voted for it.
In trading sometimes you are better lucky than good. I bought some Brazilian stuff after prediction markets were good for Bolsonaro but before the first round and I’m quite happy today that I dumped them on the big rip after the first round. Now everything I bought is 10% lower than my first buy and I’m wandering if Brazil is cheap enough to buy even with Lulu.
I bought $PAGS which I was also up bigly on, but am now down. I wasn't gambling on the election, I just like the stock.
It's very, very tempting to day trade this. We have to bounce, right? 25% is unreal.
Edit: F it. I put
$150k$230k into EWZ. Undervalued index anyway.Edit: And... I'm out. Cleared 2.85%. Beats working.
A 25% decline is not unreal for a surprise election win by the socialist party in a third-world country. Currency devaluation, property expropriation, excessive taxation, and bans on foreign distributions are all realistic possibilities. The US equity market is not a good reference benchmark for equity markets in other countries.
Agree that the US market is not a good reference, but out of curiosity, can you share any examples? I can't think of a single time when a country stock index collapsed 25% in a day off the top of my head. Which times did you remember in your investing career? I'm sure it's happened.
One thing to keep in mind is that the socialist President is already in charge.
Edit: I also just checked with ChatGPT. It's a little confusing because there are so many parties, but it does appear that that Bolsonaro aligned parties control about 70% of the lower chamber and 75% of the Senate. So it's quite possible Lula is impeached and removed. His corrupt judges can be removed more easily since it only takes the 2/3rds of the Senate, without lower house involvement.
So, at a minimum, Lula is extremely boxed in, his judges even more so.
Argentina 2019
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