The Brazilian Ibovespa benchmark stock index slipped on Friday, reflecting a global fall caused by international investors’ worries about inflation, soaring interest rates, and a possible recession on the horizon.
The Ibovespa has traded down by 2.4 percent. International indexes such as the S&P 500, Dow, Nasdaq, and Europe’s Stoxx 600 fell by more than 2 percent.
The trading session has been particularly unfavorable to stock prices of oil companies, such as Petrobras, PetroRio, and 3R Petroleum. Oil prices went down by over 5 percent abroad, on the back of heightened concerns about slowing economic growth.
At around 4:30 pm, ordinary shares of Petrobras were trading down by 7.23 percent. That is enough to slash the state-controlled company’s market value by BRL 30 billion (USD 5.7 billion).
Petrobras was singled out as the company that most remunerates investors with earnings, according to a report by asset management consultancy Janus Henderson.
Higher energy commodity prices helped boost the earnings of companies in emerging markets, where the oil and gas sector typically accounts for a large portion of total corporate earnings.