I am not very familiar with trading futures. Are there options available on the futures? I'm Brazilian and got a bank account there. I need it more for a hedge than anything else, that's why I am wondering about the options on futures. Do you ever wire funds from Brasil to an US bank? What kind of dollar they exchange the real for (turismo, comercial)? Thanks!!
You need a counterparty that's a Big Player. If your FCM is MF Global or someone equally huge, no problem. Just call them up on the telephone and say "I want to use an EFP to get into a position in CME Brazilian Real, please. Here is my order: Buy 6 contracts of Sept 2009 Brazilian Real at the CME, using EFP from the Cash FX market, at the market price (or whatever price you prefer) at 7:20 AM Chicago Time. Can you do that for me?" http://www.cmegroup.com/clearing/trading-practices/efp-ebf-efr-trades.html Over at ICE they think EFP stands for "Exchange Futures for Physical". At CME they have a different idea. Here's a website image from ICE, followed by a website image from CME.
I notice that Brazilian ADRs price graphs (attached) are similar to the Brazilian Real exchange rate graph (inverted in this case). You might be able to assemble a portfolio of Brazilian ADRs as a proxy for the Brazilian Real. List of Brazilian ADRs: http://www.stockpickr.com/port/Brazilian-ADR-s/
There is a Brazilian Real ETF, BZF, it tracks the BRL pretty well http://br.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=1y&s=BRLUSD=X&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=bzf It supposed to be like a money market account in real, the outperformance of the ETF might be due NAV going up more than the underlying due interest income
I always heard that Saxobank offered BRL pairs, but a search of their site comes up blank. Maybe they once had it? Not sure why it's not formally offered by regular FX brokers. Is it similar to RUB and CNY which can't be foreign-settled?