In Brazil, girls just want to have a diverse investment portfolio

From a very young age, Mariana’s parents always taught her the importance of saving money. When she was just a girl, she had her own savings account and would often see her mother and father investing money in stocks, bonds, and funds. And when she turned 23, she made her first foray into the Brazilian stock exchange, looking for new ways to make her money go even further.  

And Mariana is not alone, in fact, she is part of a wave of new female Brazilian investors. This year, for the first time in history, Brazil’s B3 stock exchange surpassed the milestone of 1 million women investors, almost a sixfold increase from ten years ago.

“I began by buying more ‘conservative’ shares, like [state-controlled oil giant] Petrobras, but now I’m even investing in cryptocurrency. I always thought stocks were too risky for me. But then the pandemic came and I saw a great opportunity to start investing,” explains Mariana, who works as a cultural producer in the northeastern state of Recife.

The initial push, she says, came when she came across the YouTube channel Me Poupe!, founded by journalist and finance expert Nathalia Arcuri. “I started to see that investing wasn’t something out of this world.”

Ms. Arcuri’s project was among the pioneers of a...