Measuring structural risk disposition in Brazilian equities
Abstract
We propose a measurement architecture for persistent structural risk disposition in the Brazilian equity market and evaluate one implementation, the Structural Risk Disposition Composite (SRDC). The composite aggregates four weakly correlated market-derived dimensions—options positioning, credit conditions, market breadth, and external capital allocation—each expressed as a rolling one-year percentile, over 2016–2026 (2,388 daily observations). The construct is formative, in the tradition of financial conditions indexes. Replacing a price-momentum dimension with credit conditions yields a pair of results: an informational gain over financial-stress criteria that placebo substitutions cannot reproduce (an incremental criterion gain ΔR²(credit–noise) of 0.112 on realized volatility, a criterion sharing no input with the composite), and a reduction of the composite's price-trend correlation from 0.60 to 0.34—generic, by our own placebos, to any slow price-orthogonal replacement, meaningful only within the pair. The composite describes market state; it does not predict returns.
How to cite
Luiz Fernando Nunes da Silva. Measuring structural risk disposition in Brazilian equities. Brazilian Review of Finance, v. 24, n. 1, 2026. p. e202615. DOI: 10.12660/rbfin.v24n1.2026.98843.