The opening game of the World Cup is six days away, but traders in Brazil are already more focused on soccer than stocks. Trading volume has been below 4 billion reais ($1.8 billion) every day this week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The last time transactions didn’t breach that mark for four consecutive days was in February 2009, the data show. “The World Cup effect already started,” Felipe Rocha, a strategist at Guide Investimentos, said by phone from Curitiba, Brazil. “If the World Cup was being played anywhere else, volumes would already be dropping. Now that it’s here, it will be very slow.”
Sao Paulo declared a holiday for June 12th, the first day of tournament play, meaning there will be no trading. On the other days Brazil plays - June 17th and 23rd for first-round games - the stock and derivatives market will close two hours before the start of the matches.
While there was a pickup in volume today as the Ibovespa surged the most in two months after polls showed president Dilma Rousseff losing support before October’s election, trading will be reduced this year because of the tournament, BMandFBovespa chief executive Edemir Pinto said in an interview at Bloomberg’s office in Sao Paulo last month.
Trading volume was at 2.29 billion reais today in Sao Paulo today.
