📈Ibovespa today

The Ibovespa is an index — a single number summarising the performance of a basket of stocks. Instead of following hundreds of companies one by one, the index bundles the most traded stocks on B3, the Brazilian exchange, into one indicator. If it rises 1%, those companies gained 1% on a weighted-average basis that day.

It has existed since 1968 and is calculated by B3 itself. It is the reference funds, managers and the press use to say whether the Brazilian market had a good or bad day.

One detail that confuses newcomers: the Ibovespa is measured in points, not in reais or dollars. The number is not the price of anything — it is a scale that only means something compared with itself over time. Going from 100,000 to 150,000 points is a 50% gain; the absolute figure, on its own, says nothing.

The Ibovespa portfolio is reviewed every four months (January, May and September). To qualify, a stock must be among the most traded on the exchange, appear in at least 95% of sessions and account for a minimum share of total traded value.

Each company's weight comes from its free-float market value — only the shares actually circulating, excluding those locked with controlling shareholders — with a cap so no single company dominates the index.

In practice the Ibovespa is concentrated: the first few positions in the table below account for a large slice of the whole. When Vale and Petrobras drop sharply, the entire index falls with them — even if most other companies rose.

You cannot buy "the Ibovespa" directly. The usual route is an ETF, an exchange-traded fund replicating the index. The best known is BOVA11; PIBB11 and others also exist. They trade on B3 like any stock.

For investors outside Brazil, the common alternative is a US-listed Brazil ETF such as EWZ, which tracks a similar basket of large Brazilian companies in dollars — meaning your return also depends on the real-versus-dollar exchange rate.