Learn
Money that does the work for you.
Two reading paths for retail investors. One starts from a savings account losing to inflation. The other improves a portfolio that already exists.
01 / Begin
Start investing in LATAM
A peso, a real or a sol kept in a checking account loses real value every year. Mexican consumer prices rose 4.7% last year. Brazilian inflation ran at 4.5%. Most savings accounts in the region pay less than that.
There is a different default. The five steps below take you from understanding why money erodes to making your first monthly investment.
See what inflation actually does to your money.
Across LATAM, the price of bread, transport and rent has outpaced savings interest for a decade running. Real wealth shrinks while the number on the screen looks unchanged.
Pick something that grows faster than that.
An ETF holds hundreds of companies inside a single tradable share. SPY holds the 500 largest US companies. Most retail investors in LATAM start there.
Buy a fixed amount every month.
Do not try to time the market. Most retail investors lose to it. Monthly contributions average your purchase price across good months and bad ones.
Compound it for as long as you can.
Time is the part of investing nobody can buy more of. The chart below shows what $100 a month becomes when you leave it alone for thirty years.
Pick a broker that operates in your country.
Each LATAM country has different broker options, different paperwork and different tax treatment. The right broker is the one that lets you buy what you want, where you live.
Feature graphic
What $100 a month becomes.
Monthly contribution of $100, 8% average annual return, compounded monthly. Total contributions: $36,000. Compounding does the rest.
Try the calculator with your own numbers02 / Refine
Improve what you already own
You bought a few stocks. Maybe an ETF. Maybe some crypto. The next question is whether you bought them on purpose.
The five steps below sharpen that purpose. How concentrated is your position. How much you pay in fees every year. How your portfolio is supposed to behave when the market drops twenty percent.
Stop owning one thing.
If you only own one stock and it falls 40%, you lost 40%. If you own five hundred, you lost what the market lost. Diversification is the closest thing to a free lunch in finance.
Pay attention to the fee.
A 1% expense ratio sounds small. Over thirty years it costs you roughly a third of your final balance. The cheapest broad-market ETFs charge 0.03%.
Decide stocks vs bonds vs cash on purpose.
Picking the right asset mix matters more than picking the right stocks inside that mix. This is where most professionals start.
Know how much your portfolio moves.
Volatility is how much a stock wobbles. Beta is how much it moves relative to the market. Both shape what happens to you in a downturn.
Read what you are paying for company profit.
Price-to-earnings is the simplest valuation tool. It tells you how many years of current profit you are paying for in today's stock price.
By country
What changes when you invest from here.
Most concepts on this page apply to any market. A handful do not. The local instrument, the local tax form, and the local broker rules each shape what you actually do.
CETES
CETES are short-term Mexican treasury bills denominated in pesos and backed by the federal government.
Most Mexican retail investors hold them as a peso-side anchor while their stock and ETF positions sit in dollar accounts.
Tesouro Selic
Tesouro Selic is the post-fixed Brazilian treasury bond that tracks the Selic rate. It is the most-held instrument on Tesouro Direto.
Brazilian portfolios usually anchor in Tesouro Selic for the cash sleeve, with ações and ETFs handling the growth side.
TES
TES are peso-denominated Colombian treasury bonds. They sit between savings and equity on the local risk curve.
Colombian retail investors use them when local rates are high enough to beat inflation by a real margin.
UF
The UF is an inflation-indexed unit, not an instrument by itself. Most long-term Chilean savings, mortgages and pension contributions are denominated in UF.
Thinking in UF rather than pesos is the first move toward an inflation-aware Chilean portfolio.
BVL
The Bolsa de Valores de Lima is the local stock exchange. Mining names dominate the local index, which makes diversification across borders matter more here than elsewhere.
Peruvian retail investors typically pair a small local allocation with US-listed ETFs for breadth.
All concepts
The full library.
Fifteen concepts, grouped by where they fit in the two reading paths above. Each links to a long-form page with an interactive component.