In October 2008, despite solid operating fundamentals, Mexico’s third largest retailer, Controladora Comercial Mexicana SAB de CV, filed for bankruptcy. The culprit: risky foreign-exchange bets that lost it an estimated $1.4 billion. At the same time, Brazil’s paper-pulp giant Aracruz Celulose SA lost $920 million on bad foreign-currency gambles. Such losses were all too common, as companies throughout LatinAmerica lost millions, sometimes billions, of dollars owing to foreign-exchange speculation that had little to nothing to do with their core businesses. These losses were especially prevalent in Brazil and Mexico. Brazilian corporate foreign-exchange losses alone were estimated to exceed $30 billion and to have affected 200 companies. The common thread to these losses was a bet that the steady appreciation of both the Mexican peso and Brazilian real against the U.S. dollar in the years leading up to 2008, thanks to high commodity prices and record foreign investment, would continue. For example, Comercial Mexicana, whose stores sell many imported products, had protected itself against currency fluctuations by purchasing dollar futures. However, with the peso’s continuing rise, that strategy proved costly. Rather than just stop buying dollar futures, Comercial Mexicana went one better and began to sell dollar derivatives, not only leaving itself subject to transaction exposure on its purchases of foreign goods but magnifying that risk by also exposing it to losses on its currency derivatives if the dollar strengthened. That unexpected scenario occurred in 2008 when investors, panicked over the global financial crisis, began pulling money out of Mexico, Brazil, and other emerging markets, sending their currencies down sharply and leading to the huge foreign-exchange losses. Comercial Mexicana, Aracruz, and many of its Mexican and Brazilian compatriots, such as Cemex and Grupo Votorantim, learned to their regret that profitable currency speculation required either superior information or skills very different from those needed to run their businesses.