ForecastingStocks

Tesouro Direto is a program run by Brazil’s National Treasury that lets individuals buy federal government bonds directly, online, in small amounts. When you buy one, you are lending money to the federal government, which is considered the lowest credit risk available in the local currency.

Why it is the reference for safety

A national government can tax and, ultimately, control the currency its own debt is issued in. That makes domestic government bonds the risk-free reference that everything else is measured against — when people say a CDB pays "a spread over the government rate", this is the rate they mean.

What makes it accessible

Low minimums — you can start with a small fraction of a single bond, often around R$30 or less at the time of writing.
Bought through a broker — you hold the bonds via an investment platform; the Treasury is the issuer.
Daily liquidity — the Treasury guarantees to buy your bond back any business day at the current market price (this is where mark-to-market, covered soon, becomes important).

The families of bonds

There are three core types, each matching one of the return structures from Chapter 1:

Tesouro Selic — floating, tracks the Selic rate.
Tesouro Prefixado — fixed rate, known at purchase.
Tesouro IPCA+ — inflation plus a fixed real rate.

There are also goal-oriented variants (Renda+ for retirement income and Educa+ for education) that are IPCA-linked bonds structured to pay out as a monthly income stream. The next lessons take each one in turn.