The question arrives already narrowed: can I still buy Tesouro Direto if I have lived in Lisbon for four years?
And in almost every case I look at, the obstacle is not the bond. The bond is indifferent to where you sleep. The obstacle is the account the bond has to pass through, which is a completely different problem with completely different fixes.
So this is two articles. First what the instrument is and what the three families are for. Then the access question, and the point where I hand you to a contador — a Brazilian accountant — and stop.
Every rate below is an invented example. Read the live rates off the Tesouro Direto site before you use any of this. I name no specific bond and no maturity, and nothing here is personalized investment advice — that depends on facts an article cannot know.
What you are actually buying
Tesouro Direto is not a product. It is the platform through which the Brazilian National Treasury sells federal bonds directly to individuals, in small pieces, with no fund wrapped around them.
That matters for one reason: the debtor is the federal government, not your bank. Your bank or broker acts as agente de custódia, the custody agent that routes the order and holds the position in your name. A pipe, not the counterparty.
The platform sells fractions of a bond, so the entry ticket is small — look up the current minimum, which is a live figure. You reach it through a brokerage account or a bank account in Brazil.
B3, the exchange, charges an annual custody fee on the balance, with an exemption band on the Selic-linked family up to a certain amount. Look up both figures, then price the fee: an example 0.20% a year on R$50,000 — about US$10,000 at an example R$5.00 — is R$100.
Against an example 12% gross that is under a tenth of a point of your return. Small — but charged whether the year went well or badly, which is the only reason to know it.
Three families, three different certainties
The names on the screen are long, but they resolve into three families. The right question is not which pays most. It is what you want to be certain about, because each family sells one certainty and charges you the others.
| Family | What it pays | What you know in advance | What you do not | If sold before maturity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed rate (prefixado) | A stated rate to maturity | The exact number of reais you get at maturity | What those reais will buy | Price moves with market rates; longer terms move more |
| Selic-linked | Accumulated Selic rate | That it tracks Brazilian policy daily | What the rate will be | Price barely moves; the calmest exit |
| Inflation-linked (IPCA+) | The IPCA inflation index plus a fixed spread | Your real return, in purchasing power | The number of reais it becomes | Usually the largest swings, as maturities are long |
Each bond’s name carries its maturity year, which is how you tell two of the same family apart. An inflation-linked bond defends purchasing power by construction rather than by luck — a description of the mechanism, not a suggestion to buy one.
The catch hidden in the word “daily”
The Treasury commits to buying its bonds back on business days. People hear “daily liquidity” and stop reading. The repurchase happens at the price of that day, and that price is set by the rate the market wants now, not the rate you agreed to.
Brazilians call this marcação a mercado — mark to market. Take a bond paying R$1,000 at maturity in five years, bought when the market rate is an example 12% a year. Its price today is 1,000 ÷ 1.125 = R$567.43. Hold to maturity and you receive R$1,000 and earn exactly that 12%, whatever happened in between.
Sell after one year instead and the price is 1,000 ÷ (1 + r)4, where r is whatever the market wants for the remaining four years.
| Market rate one year later (example) | Repurchase price | Your one-year return on R$567.43 |
|---|---|---|
| 10% (rates fell) | R$683.01 | +20.4% |
| 12% (unchanged) | R$635.52 | +12.0% |
| 14% (rates rose) | R$592.08 | +4.3% |
| 16% (rates rose hard) | R$552.29 | −2.7% |
Same bond, same contract, same issuer. A contracted rate is a promise about maturity, not about next year.
Redo it with your own numbers and one thing becomes obvious: the more years left, the larger the price move for the same change in rates. Which is why the Selic-linked family is the one that sits still, and why money with an uncertain date behaves differently from money with a fixed one.
Fixed or inflation-linked: what the choice is a bet on
One calculation is worth ten seconds every time. Suppose the fixed-rate bond is quoted at an example 12% and the inflation-linked one at an example IPCA + 6%. The inflation rate at which the two give the same result is 1.12 ÷ 1.06 − 1 = 5.66% a year.
If inflation over the period averages more than 5.66%, the inflation-linked bond comes out ahead; less, and the fixed one does. That 5.66% is the market’s own implied inflation — inflação implícita — sitting inside the two quotes.
It tells you what you would be betting on. It does not tell you which to buy, and neither will I. Run it with the two rates on your screen and ask only whether you would take the other side of that number.
Now the real obstacle: your account
Because all of it runs through a Brazilian institution, the requirements you collide with are account requirements, not bond requirements. In practice:
- A CPF — your Brazilian taxpayer number — in good standing, and documents that have not expired.
- A cadastro — your registration record — that is current. An out-of-date address is the commonest reason an account stops accepting orders.
- A suitability questionnaire that has not expired; most institutions renew it on a cycle.
- A working way to receive two-factor codes, which is very often tied to a Brazilian mobile number that stopped working the year you left.
- Your institution’s own policy on clients with a foreign address, which varies and is theirs to set.
None of it is exotic, and most is fixable in an afternoon once you know that is the problem. What I see is people deciding the bond is closed to them when the account merely went quiet. Keeping it alive is its own subject: keeping a Brazilian account while you live abroad.
Where I stop
There is a fork underneath all of this, and it is not mine to resolve. Whether you count as resident or non-resident for Brazilian purposes changes which regime applies, and there is a separate framework for non-resident investors that runs through a local representative.
Which side you are on is a question of your own facts. I will not tell you your status, what you must declare, or what you owe — not in Brazil, and certainly not where you live. That is a contador’s job, worth paying for once instead of guessing annually. I do not give immigration or residency advice either: not my licence.
What to do this week
- Log into your Brazilian institution and check that the cadastro, documents and two-factor channel are current. Before anything else.
- Ask support three questions: can my account place Tesouro Direto orders today, what does my registered address say, and what does the institution charge on top of the B3 custody fee.
- Read today’s rate for each of the three families off the Tesouro Direto site, and write down the implied inflation between the fixed and inflation-linked quotes.
- Decide which certainty you want — a reais amount, a real return, or a resting place — before looking at which pays most.
- Put the residency and declaration question to a contador once, in writing.
Before treating any Brazilian headline rate as a return, run the three deductions in what Brazil’s interest rate is worth from abroad, then set it honestly against what you earn where you live, as in a CDB against a US savings account. The rest sits in the guide to earning abroad with money in Brazil.