June 3 (Bloomberg) — Peru’s first Exchange Traded Fund will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange by the “middle of June,” said the chief executive officer of Global X Management Company LLC, a New York-based asset manager.

“The stock market has risen a lot, investors are bullish, and that’s helping us,” Bruno del Ama, the New York-based CEO of Global X, said in a phone interview. “We’re giving access to the Peruvian market and in the future people can go short in Peru, which is an option that doesn’t exist today.”

Global X and Barclays Plc have been competing to introduce the first Peruvian ETF, aiming to lure global investors to the world’s best performing stock market this year. The funds issue a number of shares and trade throughout the day like stocks. Most are designed to passively

…

Investors spent the holiday-shortened Christmas week in an un-merry mood, digesting more gloomy economic data and taking stock of a tumultuous 2008.

With the S&P 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Index down by 35.8% and 40.6% respectively for the year to date, many investors would be anxious to wave the old year goodbye. But changing the calendar digits from ’08 to ’09 will regrettably not make an iota’s difference to the perilous nature of the investment environment facing investors as we usher in the New Year.

Come January 1, investors will not only be hung over from 2008’s market rout (and possibly the previous night’s exuberance), but also still be battling with the implications of the credit crisis for the global economy and financial markets,

...

Peruvian miner Buenaventura (Compania De Minas Buenaventura S.A.A.) (NYSE: BVN), with a market cap of USD 3.96 billion, is Peru’s largest publicly traded precious metals company. While there are certainly a lot of Gold bulls screaming “Inflation” at the moment, it could in fact be the mining stocks rather than the commodity per se that are in for a positive adjustment heading into 2009. As one commentator on Seeking Alpha noted yesterday: The XAU/Gold ratio is a measure of index of leading gold mining companies (XAU – Philly Gold and Silver Sector Index) relative to gold price. Over the past 25 years, the XAU/Gold ratio has been 0.25. That means the XAU index would be about ¼ the price of an ounce of gold. On Monday (Dec. 8), the XAU closed at 94 while gold closed at $760 an ounce. This makes the XAU/Gold ...