I have a trick question for you, especially if you’re interested in emerging markets: Among the four BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — which offers the best stock market performance for American investors? Be careful how you answer, because appearances can be deceiving, especially if you focus strictly on one year. Looking at year-to-date results, for example, it might seem that the answer is Russia. From the close of trading at the end of last year through the closing price this past Friday … FXI, the exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking China’s blue chips, is up 45.87 percent … PIN, representing India’s major stocks, is up 64.16 percent, and … EWZ, the leading Brazil ETF, is up 104.25 percent. But …...

This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Gerard Lyons (Times Online): Discovering if we learnt the lessons of Black Monday, October 19, 2009. Today (Monday) is the twenty-second anniversary of Black Monday. On this day in 1987 stock markets around the world crashed. The Dow Jones fell 22.6 per cent in one day, London shed one fifth of its value over two days. The newspapers and television were full of pictures of traders in panic. Sound familiar? Reflecting on 1987 is interesting in its own right and has lessons for today.

• Allan Dodds Frank (The Daily Beast): Hedge fund dominoes, October 18, 2009. Friday’s insider-trading charges against the founder of Galleon could be the tip of the iceberg. Other hedge funds and the McKinsey consulting

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Let’s take a quick look at what’s happening in Brazil, over and above the 2016 Olympics being awarded to Rio de Janeiro.

“I don’t know if I will live to see it,” said Brazil’s president Luiz (Lula) da Silva a couple weeks ago. “But Brazil has to transform itself into a big power in the 21st century. We have everything to make it happen. We are not talking about a little country here.”

No, indeed. Brazil is not “a little country” anymore. Any prudent investor has to consider how to hitch a ride on the Brazil growth story. Brazil is transforming into one of the world’s great powers in this century. It’s important to follow the news from Brazil. At the same time, you have to know where to look, and how to read between the lines.

By official count — what the Brazilian government will confirm — the rocks of Brazil hold

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There was a lot of talk about potential host cities for the Olympics lately and the politics associated. That talk died down after Brazil was awarded the honor of hosting. You may be asking “how does that relate to trading”…well my friend Raul of the Shocked Investor is about to make that connection. He has been researching the Brazilian stocks and options recently and more importantly ones traded on American exchanges. Enjoy the article and be sure to leave a comment with your thoughts.

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With Rio de Janeiro having just being awarded the Olympics 2016 there will be enormous activity and interest in Brazil. There will be tremendous investments made in the city and in the country. Whether the government itself makes a profit money-wise is a difficult proposition, and difficult to measure. However, the benefits to the country are long term and in many other indirect areas.

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a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZckZ-8naz0/SsaBdbUwQPI/AAAAAAAAC3U/tu1TB_MD5d8/s1600-h/big+trucks+3.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZckZ-8naz0/SsaBdbUwQPI/AAAAAAAAC3U/tu1TB_MD5d8/s320/big+trucks+3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388136346746372338" border="0" //aA reader left a question asking what I thought about the iShares Emerging Markets Infrastructure ETF (EMIF), a client holding, now that Brazil won the 2016 summer Olympics and early reports say that about half the necessary facilities still need to be built.br /br /CNBC certainly devoted a lot of air time to whether or not the Olympics makes Brazil an even more compelling investment destination than it had previously been.br /br /For a little bit of context I did one Olympic trade for clients in 2003, I bought Hellenic Telecom (OTE) ahead of the Athens games. The idea was similar to what was discussed yesterday about Brazil, money will be spent and there might be investment demand too. The trade worked out well but certainly was ...

Offshore Nambia is quickly becoming one of the world’s greatest frontier oil provinces.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, a few major companies took out oil exploration concessions there from the government of South Africa. In 1974, Shell (NYSE: RDS.A / RDS.B) discovered a gas field off the southwest coast with the Kudu project. Early estimates were 1 trillion cubic feet of reserves, but current estimates range up to 10 trillion. Kudu was big, but nobody much cared about natural gas back then. Gas was too cheap, and southern Africa was too far away.

There was hardly any development around Kudu for the next 20 years. South Africa was under international sanctions due to its apartheid regime, so oil companies and other outside investment stayed away. Almost nothing happened with energy development until Namibia became independent in 1990.

By the early 1990s, the gas field at Kudu intrigued foreign oil companies.

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In the last few months we have seen a very strong stock market rally. The market has recovered from highly distressed levels and posted exorbitant gains.  In addition the “wall of money” from the U.S. Federal Reserve has pushed risk-prone investors back into the market, pushing its general level up. 

You see, the massive fiscal stimuli and ultra-easy money from the Fed does indeed have real effects on the economy.  Whether you want to call them artificial or real, the stimuli have moved and will continue to move profits, until it is withdrawn.  And the timing of the deployment of the fiscal and monetary stimuli, the timing of its positive effects and the timing of its eventual removal are uncertain.

In addition, we have many short-term uncertainties. The upcoming Group of 20 (G20) meeting has potentially important ramifications for the global financial system and for global currencies. We also will get more

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Currencies trade in a tight range again…U.S. Retail Sales are a clunker! RBA’s Stevens is upbeat! Thoughts on Brazil…And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Good day… And a Happy Friday to one and all! The end of the week… It’s been a tough week for yours truly, as I’ve hobble around in pain all week. But, as I recall, I promised 2 years ago that I would not complain about these things in the future… So! I carry on!

Well… Front and center this morning… The currencies are trading near levels they were when I signed off yesterday morning. They did have a brief rally, after the U.S. Retail Sales data showed some real rot

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“First Ounce Bounce” Set to Pay 1,100% Government filing NI 43-101 is mandatory in Canada. It shows the proven reserves of any company intending to mine gold. The latest filing from a small renegade company we’ve just uncovered lists their reserves at an astounding 10.1 million ounces. It’s the biggest gold strike in Canadian history – and one of the biggest in the world. Yet few investors have seen or heard of NI 43-101 yet. Getting in before the “first ounce bounce” – when the first ounce comes out of the ground – is likely to yield an initial return of 1,100%. Go here for the full report.

Brazilians used to joke that their country was the country of the future – and always would be because a new crisis seemed to crop up every time the economy came close to fulfilling its potential.

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I'm a shareholder and pretty frequent follower of Swiss industrial/electrical company ABB (a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ABB"ABB/a). They are constantly getting new orders, and I don't report them all, but a href="http://www.abb.com/cawp/seitp202/06c9cd09d993758cc1257601003db274.aspx?leftdb=abbzh250amp;v=553Eamp;e=us"this is a big one/a.br /br /blockquoteABB, the leading power and automation technology group, has won orders worth over $540 million from the Abengoa Group to deliver the key technology for the world’s longest power transmission link to be constructed in Brazil. pThe power highway will link two new hydropower plants in the northwest of the country with São Paulo, Brazil's main economic center, over a distance of 2,500 kilometers. Power will be transmitted at very high voltage (600 kilovolts) to minimize transmission losses.br /br /This will be the second transmission project in Brazil using HVDC (high-voltage direct current) at 600 kV. The Itaipu project, with two transmission lines built by ABB in 1984 and 1987, is the world’s highest-voltage DC ...