Hot Market Lures New Generation Of Brazilian Investors

Hmmm, unfortunately this reminds me of stories I read of Americans in 1999 and Chinese in 2007.

• When Paolo Portinho meets up with his musician friends for a night out in Rio de Janeiro, they jam a few tunes and knock back some beers -- but only after having a serious talk about the stock market.
• Brazilians' long-held suspicion of stock investment, born out of years of rampant inflation and economic instability, is evaporating in the face of a Sao Paulo market that has more than tripled in 4 years on the back of a booming economy.
• The number of individual investors in Brazil has risen six-fold in the past five years and more than doubled since 2006 to nearly 490,000. In 5 years, the daily amount they trade has soared to 1.8 billion reais ($1.1 billion) from 120 million reais ($73.6 million). (uh oh)
  
• At a time when many Americans and Europeans are fretting over their jobs and houses as recession looms, magazine covers here are full of pictures showing grinning investors being showered in cash from their stock market exploits. (uh oh)
  
• "I've been trading stocks since I was 18 but I never saw anything like this," said Mauricio Bastter Hissa, a 44-year-old who has written several best-selling books on investing here. (uh oh) Hissa, gave up his job as a doctor last year to meet growing demand for his workshops and investment advice on his website.
• ...home brokers are a fever among Brazilian investors." Home brokers is the Brazilian term for Internet trading sites.
• A proliferation of advertisements in newspapers and magazines offering too-good-to-be-true returns on stocks suggests some people may be vulnerable to a downturn.
• "People are not well educated," said Hissa. "Not only in stocks, but in their finances -- people spend all their money, borrow a lot of money and pay 10-20 times in (high-interest) installments." (sounds vaguely familiar to a 1st world country I know)

Let's keep an eye on these guys. People grinning under showers of dinero on magazines is never a good thing ;)