FBZ

Unlike other central banks around the world such as the U.S. Federal Reserve, Brazil's Central Bank has just one responsibility: to keep inflation low.Credit lines and other forms of borrowing, such as debt issuing, are fundamental for a country's economic growth as they allocate capital to expanding companies.In Brazil, inflation is measured by the IPCA (National Consumer Price Index), which grew to 2.44% for the trailing twelve months.

Countries around the world have responded to the economic downturn by implementing fiscal stimulus.This intervention has led to a deterioration of fiscal finances everywhere.However, even by these relative standards, Brazil and South Africa look particularly dismal.

First Trust Brazil AlphaDEX® Fund (FBZ) declares $0.055/share quarterly dividend, -54.5% decrease from prior dividend of $0.121.Forward yield 2.04%Payable Sept. 30; for shareholders of record Sept. 25; ex-div Sept. 24.See

The coronavirus impact looks to be ebbing, and the Brazilian government has been generous with demand-side stimulus measures.Manufacturing PMI, retail sales, loan growth, and services sector have also seen sequential improvements.Longer-term, commodity-rich EMs such as Brazil should benefit from the surge in liquidity.

The “middle income trap” may well characterize the experience of Brazil and most of Latin America since the 1980s.Conversely, South Korea maintained its pace of evolution, reaching a high-income status.Such divergence of economic growth can be related to their distinctive performances of domestic accumulation of technological and organizational capabilities.Their different approaches to global value chains and tradeglobalization reinforced such discrepancy in domestic accumulation processes.

Fixed-income exchange-traded funds have been the (justifiable) focus of the many price disjunctions between the ETFs and their holdings. But the same problems have been cropping up in emerging market ETFs, especially in the Philippines, Brazil, and China.