Gold hit two historic milestones in 2008. First, in early March, the “yellow metal” hit its all-time high of $1,030 an ounce. Just three months later, the price of gold for December delivery had plummeted to $681 an ounce, a 21-month low and 33.9% drop from its record high. Most gold bugs were equal parts puzzled and broken-hearted.

The world’s stock markets tanked, as did some of its biggest economies. In such an environment, they thought, gold should have risen. After all, gold is widely considered to be a safe-haven investment when everything else is spiraling south.

However, Money Morning Contributing Editor Martin Hutchinson – an investment banker with more than 25 years’ experience on Wall Street and a leading expert on the international financial markets – understood perfectly what other investors did not.

“Gold is not a safe haven against recession,” said

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Interesting story in this week’s Economist (”Preparing for tougher times”) underlines a plethora of dour economic forecasts for Latin American economies heading into 2009: In the past two months, Latin America has seen its stockmarkets crash, currencies wobble and credit start to dry up. That comes on top of falling exports and the plunge in the prices of the commodities it sells to the world. Twisting the knife, less money is being sent home by Latin Americans working abroad. Specifically: As recently as October, the IMF expected growth in the region next year of 3.2%.  This week the World Bank forecast 2.1%.  The same day Morgan Stanley, an investment bank whose Latin American research team is among the more pessimistic about the region, cut its forecast for the seven largest economies in 2009 from growth of 1.5% to a contraction of 0.4% ...

CF Industries Holdings Inc. (CF) has leading market shares in many key fertilizers. Strong domestic and international grain markets have produced an exceptionally high global demand for fertilizer, translating into substantially higher selling prices for all the products.The company is optimistic about its phosphate business where the market is expected to remain tight near term due to healthy offshore demand growth in India and Brazil, as well as higher application rates in the U.S. This is likely to lead to higher prices and cash margins for various fertilizers.In addition, the company is likely to benefit from the proposed nitrogen facility in Peru, which will address the nitrogen demand on the west coast of Central and South America as well as Mexico, which does not have any nitrogen facility.As a result, we rate the shares a Buy with a target of $65.00....

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 ...

 

Barclays Global Investors expects its exchange-traded funds business in Brazil to reach $1 billion to $2 billion in the next year.

The forecast follows the introduction of the first three BGI iShares ETFs for the Brazilian market last week (see story here.)

The iShares ETFs were the first ETFs approved by the Brazilian regulator, the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários, a process that BGI began planning three years ago. More ETF companies may now follow iShares' lead into Brazil, where hedge funds and institutional use of ETFs is expected to lead the adoption of ETFs by local investors.  

In most Latin American ETF markets, it has been institutions leading the way, and retail investor use of ETFs expected to be a much longer-term story.

Mexico and Chile are among the easiest markets in Latin America to introduce ETFs, and these are the markets where BGI's early Latin

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There was no rest for the sellers during Wednesday trading on the Canadian Markets with back door political moves creating government chaos in Ottawa. For the tale of the tape, the TSX Exchange dropped 0.37%, while the TSX Gold Index gave back 3.7% and the TSX Venture Exchange, Canada’s largest junior exploration bourse, fell 2.63% with the declining issuers outpacing the advancers by a 452 to 294 margin on volume of 160 million shares traded.

The big news of the day came from Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold (NYSE:FCX), which announced a reduction in copper production and sales for 2009 along with a 50% cut in estimated capital expenditures for 2009. The major eliminated its stock dividend. Oooch. Freeport ended the day at $18.05 down $3.77 in New York trading.

Duran Ventures tagged 146.75 metres running 0.93% copper and 0.04% molybdenum, within a broader zone of 458.1 averaging 0.497% copper and

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Stratos Renewables Corp. is an emerging ethanol company with a mission to become one of the lowest cost sugarcane-based ethanol operations in the world. Sugarcane produces up to 700% per land mass more than what corn does and is currently the only biofuel that creates no net carbon dioxide emissions.

With planned first-to-market operations along the northern coast of Peru, Stratos plans to utilize the country’s underdeveloped coastal region to cultivate and harvest its sugarcane. Peru’s coastal region is ideal for modern farming techniques and high-yield, year-round harvest, with low export transportation costs. The land prices in Peru are only a fraction of the prices in developed countries that are producing other feedstock. The country also enjoys tax-free trade to the U.S. compared with Brazil’s $0.54 per gallon tariff.

The company is committed to creating long-term sustainable growth with a business model that could possibly create

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Coming off the second worst one-day sell off since 1987, the Canadian Markets continued to freefall during Tuesday trading with slumping commodity prices and political uncertainty sparking a renewed bout of uncertainty. For the tale of the tape, the TSX Exchange dropped 0.93%, while the TSX Gold Index bucked the down trend by adding 7.5% and the TSX Venture Exchange, Canada’s largest junior exploration bourse, fell 1.08% with the declining issuers outpacing the advancers by a 423 to 309 margin on volume of 153 million shares traded.

Esperanza Silver and partner Silver Standard (NASDAQ:SSRI) tabled a 31% jump in measured and indicated gold resources at their San Luis project in Peru. The new tally is 347,000 ounces of gold running 22.3 grams gold and nearly 9 million ounces of silver grading 578 grams silver per tonne. Esperanza ended the day up C$0.01 at C$0.50, while Silver Standard closed at

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Stratos Renewables’ development and agricultural planning manager, Alfonso Altet, has more than a decade of experience in the research and development filed. He served as the manager of the Institute of Research and Development for Highlands of Universidad Nacional Agraria (Agricultural State University) in Mantaro Valley where he was responsible for researching and producing various highland crops. He also worked as Agricultural Development Manager of the National Program of Basin Management (PRONAMACH) in Cusco.

The company’s distillery advisor, Augusto De La Piedra, has four decades of experience in the sugar cane industry. He grew up on a 48,000 hectare plantation owned by his grandfather where they grew 15,000 hectares of sugar cane. De La Piedra is an industrial engineer, as well as a chemist, and is recognized as Peru’s leading expert on distilleries and refineries. He is part of the Board of Directors of

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During the Great Depression, a spike in protectionism deepened the global crisis for many countries. Sara Nunnally says greater co-operation between Asian and Latin American states should prevent a similar mistake being made this year. It should also help keep some of these nations out of recession.

This from Taipan’s Emerging Markets blog:

Members of APEC, Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation, ended their annual summits today in Lima, Peru. One of the main topics, besides the economic crisis, was free trade.

(By the way, APEC consists of member economies like China, Vietnam, the U.S., Canada, Russia, Peru, and Chile, among others.)

Free trade is a hot topic right now, with the dreaded “P” word floating about: protectionism. Protectionism is when governments restrict or restrain international trade. Most times the intent is to protect local markets from competition.

Like if the U.S. government says a tomato farmer in Mexico can no longer export

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