High and dry

摘要

For brokers on Latin America's stock-markets, the news recently has been mixed. Share prices have been rising sharply and the economic outlook has brightened. But there has been increasing concern that local markets, already small and illiquid, may dry up altogether. The trouble is that some of the most actively traded shares are in companies being bought out by foreign firms, and others are increasingly being traded in the United States. As a result, turnover last year on the Bovespa (Sao Paulo's stockmarket) was hardly any bigger in local-currency terms than it had been in 1998, despite share-price rises of 140% in reais, or around 60% in dollars (see chart).