Will investors learn to love Lula? The stock market recorded a small drop followed by a small gain, suggesting that foreign bullishness had won out over the bearishness of locals.
Sentiment towards Brazilian assets teeters on a knife edge, just as the election result did. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the leftwing former metalworker and two-times former president, beat Jair Bolsonaro, the rightwing incumbent, by just 1.8 percentage points, a little over 2mn votes of the 118.5mn counted.
Brazilian investors are often more critical of Lula than foreign counterparts. The latter remember his two terms in office in 2003-2010 not for leftwing extremism but prosperity fuelled by a commodities boom and orthodox policymaking.