Brazil's Infrastructure Plays Catch-Up

By Christian Magoon:India ETF products continue to roll into 2012 on a positive note. All non leveraged India ETFs are positive for the year. Here is the performance chart from IndiaETFs.com showing year to date results of all India ETF and ETN products. (Click to enlarge) Indian markets have bounced since the end of 2011

Latin America might follow Brazil's fate, while earlier only Brazil had problems with inflation and devaluation caused by quantitative easing, or the so-called currency wars, reported Financial Times. Recently Japan's newly elected government also announced the start of a campaign for printing money. However countries from Latin America with more conventional and free-trading economies like Chile, Mexico, Peru and Colombia might also catch the vibe of quantitative easing.  

  A final feature of the Fed’s decision to implement QE 4 will be greater inflationary pressures. This will result in lower economic growth (in real terms) as well as higher operational costs, which will eat into corporate profit margins.   As an example, consider Brazil.  

Despite recent hiccups in gold prices, if you're investing in commodities, it is still the best, safest bet, according to Morgan Stanley's commodities team led by Hussein Allidina. Silver offers a little more risk and reward than gold; Allidina expects it to outperform gold in 2013.

By David Hunkar: Most of the emerging market equity indices are down so far this year. In addition to domestic factors, the European debt crisis and worries about the state of the global economy have pulled down emerging markets. Emerging markets such as Brazil, Peru and Chile are off by double digits YTD. The MSCI index returns for select Latin American countries are listed below: Brazil: -17.07% Chile: -14.49% Colombia: -2.78%

By David Hunkar: China is becoming a major trade partner with many Latin American countries. China’s main interest in the region include natural resources such as oil, iron ore and agricultural commodities such as soya beans. Latin American countries’ trade with China increased tenfold in the period 2000-2007. However the U.S. is still the largest trade partner with Latin America. China’s trade in Latin America accounted for just one-fifth of that of the U.S in 2008.

Michael Johnston submits:In another ETF industry first, Van Eck announced today the launch of an ETF offering pure play exposure to Latin American debt markets.