Brazil stocks inch lower along with Wall Street

SAO PAULO, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Brazil's stocks inched lower in choppy trade on Friday losses on Wall Street and uncertainty over the impact of a new tax on capital inflows put pressure on a market that has gained every month since June.

Brazil's benchmark Bovespa index .BVSP shed 0.15 percent to 66,037.55 points. The index is on track in October to post its fourth straight monthly gain, having risen more than 7.0 percent this month and 75 percent so far this year.

But the country's currency, the Brazilian real (BRBY), gained 0.6 percent to 1.715 per dollar, even as the greenback rose against a basket of currencies as a survey showed sales of existing U.S. homes surged to their highest level in more than two years in September.

The losses also tracked those on Wall Street, where shares fell of industrials, energy shares and some tech companiesl, despite strong earnings from Microsoft Corp and upbeat housing data.

Optimism over Brazil's economy was being offset by fears over the capital tax inflow and volatility abroad, analysts said.

Brazil's government on Monday announced it would charge a 2.0 percent tax on capital investment into fixed-income and stocks, as a way to curb the rapid strengthening of Brazil's real. Critics fear this will curb investment in the country's financial markets, but the government said it will only curb short-term speculative investment.

At the stock exchange, some financial stocks helped keep the index under pressure. BM&FBovespa (BVMF3.SA), Brazil's largest stock exchange operator, shed 0.78 percent to 12.64 reais and Banco do Brasil (BBAS3.SA) eased 0.9 percent to 30.77 reais.

Redecard (RDCD3.SA), Brazil's second-largest credit card processing company, also fell 1.82 percent to 28.56 reais even after it said the day before its third-quarter profit had risen 18 percent.

"Despite the higher-than-expected result, we continue to worry about the sector's regulatory risk in the short and medium term," brokerage Link Corretora said in a note. It added it maintained its neutral recommendation on the stock.

Limiting the downside, heavyweight oil giant Petrobras (PETR4.SA) put on 0.35 percent at 37.13 reais and mining company Vale (VALE5.SA) put on 0.38 percent to 41.86 reais.

Interest rate futures <0#DIJ:> were also broadly lower, only days after the central bank kept interest rates on hold at 8.75 percent and said this level of interest rate was consistent with a scenario for benign inflation. (Reporting by Ana Nicolaci da Costa and Aluisio Alves)