I love Brazil :)

The S&P tonight raised Brazil's investment grade for the first time. Brazil's sovereign debt is now at BBB- up from BB+. This ultimatley lows funding costs and makes Brazil even more an attractive place for BIG money to invest. Bottom line, this is HUGE for brazil and I think it's only the beginning.

All brazilian stocks were on fire today, I'd be buying on any weakness

Brazilian exposure in my portfiolo:

RIO, PBR, FLATX, CGMFX

Looking to buy:

UBB, ITU

Adding to Petrobras / China

PBR:

Bought another 50 shares of PBR adding to my entire holdings to ~200 shares. Gotta love these pullbacks!

CAF:
Bought another 100 shares of CAF

POT:
Waiting for pullback to 170 before buying

Microsoft, Potash, the Dollar, and Taiwan

Microsoft:

As a employee, my opinion is ofcourse biased but I dont think the results were that bad. If you compare revenue against deferred vista / office revenues from last year, yeah its a drop. Factor them out and you have a solid company trading (as of right now) with a forward PE of around 13. I was happy to see XBOX in the green for the quarter and service continues to pick up momentum. What makes me shed a tear how MSN continues to bleed money..

Potash:

For those lacking confidence recently on the company, you should read their latest 10Q. It states a 6 -7 paragraph which confidently says "those who own our stock, buy more. For those who don't, buy our stock you dumbass". :)

Dollar:
The dollar continues to rally as hopes that BEN will take a break from printing money. This might pressure commodities prices but I seriously doubt it (although I feel rough rice will make a HUGE correction soon rather than later). The safest place to park money is still in the Yuan in my opinion

Taiwan:

more improving signs that things are improving between Taiwan and China

From scmp.com

"A top envoy for Taiwan’s president-elect was expected to meet with local officials in Shanghai on Friday in the latest sign of improving relations.
Chiang Pin-kung was appointed by Ma Ying-jeou, whose new government takes office May 20, as chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation, a quasi-governmental body that has held talks in the past with a mainland counterpart. China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949.

Expectations have risen for a resumption of dialogue between the foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits after a decade-long break."

Can the Red Dragon breath fire again

I was delighted to see my Chinese stocks light up this morning (CHL, LFC). Shanghai rallied 4+% percent last night making a huge reversal from the open. I believe we have seen a short term bottom from a very painful correction (painful is an understatement, the shanghai index dropped some 50% from peak!). Is all this buying pure speculation that the government will step in and stop the hemorrhage ahead of the olympics? It could be ... but I bet we'll see more bargin hunting even if we were to see lower lows.

I remain bullish of Taiwan:

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSTP26206620080423
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gmTM58C0oFJXLpmnfHUw2ZIqkH1Q
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/22/business/AS-FIN-ECO-Taiwan-China-Investment.php


Looking to buy: CAF [Morgan Stanely A Shares China mutual fund]

Putting money in Taiwan

When Jim Rogers speaks, I listen and listen very carefully. Jim rogers recently has been bullish on Taiwan near the end of the Taiwan election when speculation that Ma Ying-jeou would win by a landside. With Ma taking over on April 20th, relationships between Tawian and the Red Dragon China are already improving. Vice-president-elect Vincent Siew met with President Hu Jintao of China on the sidelines of the Boao Forum. Ma called the meeting a success saying "Of the big icy mountain, only a small piece of ice is melted," This was considered the highest contact both countries had in more than six decades. China is also considering lifting visa restrictions for Hong Kong residents wanting to travel to Taiwan. Then were also rumors that China had removed missiles that were aimed at Taiwan. Tourism stocks have surged since the victory of Ma. I expect more economy prosperity for local businesses in Taiwan. It can only get better.

Disclosure: 700 shares of EWT (Taiwan ETF)

Could Petrobras be producing oil on a middle eastern scale?

Yesterday, the head of National Petroleum Agency Haroldo Lima made a statement regarding a potential oil find near Carioca field. He estimates that the area could potentially have reserves somewhere near the 33 billion barrels. If confirmed, the new deep-water sub-salt field off the coast of Sao Paulo state would be the largest find in the world in the past 30 years. The stock reacted, skyrocketing ~8%. Petrobras is my largest holding and I was happy to see any appreciation in this stock. This find if confirmed dwarfs the last time PetroBras discovered in Tupi. However, this news was widely known and many had widely speculated that huge amounts of oil in near the Caroica field existed. Is the market late to the game? Who knows. I do know that the managment at Petrobras is extremely conservative. When this is confirmed, it definitely puts Brazilians state owned Petrobras on the top 10 oil producing countries. Brazil to join OPEC ??? :)

IMF warns food prices might cause starvation

The IMF warned that food price inflation would cause starvation if trend continues From the article:

"Thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will be suffering from
malnutrition, with consequences for all their lives," he told reporters.
He said the problem could lead to trade imbalances that may eventually affect developed nations, "so it is not only a humanitarian question".

With the falling dollar, and with the increasing usage of corn going to the production of (inefficient) Ethanol, I do not see this problem going away anytime soon. It will be extremely sad if we do face global starvation. Recent riots in Haiti and the Philippines demonstrates how serious this problem is becoming. How can we solve this problem? Relinquish our Ethanol plans which will free up 30% of the corn produced in the USA for food (an not expensive alternative fuel)
As traders and investors, it makes very much sense to place our long bets with the soft commodities.

Week in review

It hard lesson I learned this week: Don't chase performance. I was too hopped up being bullish this week that I over looked many key criteria when buying a stock. As of right now, I am heavy weighted in Energy and Chinese stocks. Even though it doesn't feel like a bottom with these Chinese stocks, I do think 5-10 or even 20 years from now, these investments (LFC, CHL) will reap huge rewards. I also took a position in DBA (Power Shares Agiculture) and Natural Gas (UNG) along with Brazilian miners RIO (CVRD) . I continue to think commodities (more so AG the metals) will continue to outperform. I also added Petrobras (largest in my portfolio) this week, I share the same opinion of the legend Ken Heebner that Petrobras could potentially produce oil on a middle eastern scale. In short, I am focusing on the long term now. I do think 23-36 months from now, these investments will reap rewards.

I will be cost averaging and building a bigger position in the Tawian ETF ETW. Taiwan will reap massive fiscal benefits as tensions between China and Taiwan improves. We are already seeing changes taking place. Last week, the Chinese government was said to have removed the missiles that were pointing to Taiwan. I believe Taiwan is a place to really keep an eye on this year.

Shifted Positions

One of my rules is never let a positions go below 10%. This is to reduce the potental loss of a position I might have. ACH and FMCN has fallen below 10% of my buying price so I had to bite the bullet and hit the SELL button.

I shifted that money into buying more PBR and UNG

Current holdings in the order of most weighted

PBR
CHL
UNG
RIO
RJA
LFC
MELI
VIP
EWT

Stepped in to buy more "stuff"

New Positions:

Long 100 shares of PBR
Long 100 shares of ACH
Long 100 shares of VIP
Long 100 shares of RIO

"We Can't Go Down" attitude

Today's horrible job numbers would have led me to believe we were going to plunge triple digits on the dow. But I am not surprised that the market is up ~30 points from yesterday's close. The market just doesn't want to go down. Buyers are stepping in on any weakness and they are not selling on strength. I am back on the long side for now and will be aggressively buying emerging markets..

Transactions today :

Open 100 shares of MELI
Open 100 shares of FMCN
Open 100 shares of LFC
Open 100 shares of CHL

Looking to buy:
ISRG, AAPL

Is the bottom in?

Like they say, when you pick bottoms you get SH*T but is the bottom in? Short term, I believe the BULLS are going to take charge. A lot of talking heads that were extremely bearish are turning bullish. And cramer says we should becareful which means we really consider start buying :)

Even though we are again in extremely overbought conditions, the dow did flash a double bottom...

Whats looking more interesting are the emerging markets, in particular CHINA. It seems like the correction in asia is finally over as the downtrend has been broken

Tomorrow, I will start to buy Chinese stocks again. In particular FMCN, BIDU, CHL.

The Bulls come out to party

I haven't been posting much, thats because I havent been doing much :.

I took some off the table with MSFT two days ago (douh!). It was a bit too early considering the rally. My motivation behind that is 1) our 401K is opening up 2) one should never invest their 401K savings into their employers 3) MSFT has done jack.

People seem to have forgotten or looked away from today's financials doom and gloom news (UBS, Deutsche Bank have to write down additional losses in subslime). Money is being rotated out of commodities and into the beaten up sectors like financials, and tech.

If we get another big rally with impressive volume like we had today, I will be forced to take put the chips back on the table.

Eyeing: BIDU,FMCN, LFC, CHL
Holding: PAL, EWT, RJA