Brazilian Financials: A Loan Can’t Be 90 Days Late Until It’s 90 Days Old
Why growth masks future credit risk and the quick read on Brazilian financials.
I hadn’t looked at Brazilian financials in a while and had a few names pop up in my feed.
Over the past 12 months all financials have lagged EWZ as high rates and FX issues plus an election and El Nino weigh on credit and returns. STNE and INTR in particular getting hammered.
To the more positive side, social media has been all over NU and MELI as the mis-priced future winners. Credit is behaving, growth is booming, and nobody sees anything bad on the horizon. MELI obviously an e-comm giant with a new growing finance arm, which is why I’m including it. The debate with MELI is more that they’re running down margin to grow share, while extending credit.
Subscriber essay
The rest of this essay opens here on September 18, 2026.
Members read the research behind it in the Terminal today.
Open the TerminalThe research behind essays like this one lives in the Terminal: open Research. 107+ companies and counting.