Investing Update | January 30, 2012 Optimism over future conditions has not evaporated among business people in some major Latin American nations. According to a report "International Business Report 2012" by Grant Thornton International, business people in Peru, Brazil and Chile harbor high degrees of optimism for the future. The firm's survey of Peru business people found that with a net 78% (those who responded as optimistic minus those who said they were pessimistic) were optimistic about the business outlook. That tied with the nation of Georgia with the highest scores of net optimism. The net score of 74% for business people in Brazil placed it in third place of the nations surveyed, just behind Georgia and Peru. With a net 52% of business people surveyed classified as optimistic, Chile—with the eighth most enthusiastic business people in the world--made the list of the world's top 10 nations as measured by net optimism of its business populace. Count me as an optimist! Just after President Obama (following years of delays) finally signed free-trade agreements with Mexico and Colombia, I added a position in the Global X InterBolsa FTSE Colombia20 ETF (NYSE:GXG) in order to provide LSI subscribers with the opportunity to widely benefit from the additional economic growth that Colombia would achieve from the pact. In the past, the LSI Model ETF Portfolio, in addition to containing conventional Latin American exchange traded funds, included positions in some funds to provide hedges to protect investments in our other model portfolios. These occasionally included long and short ETFs covering commodities produced by Latin American countries and even currency ETFs to hedge against monetary fluctuations that might have negatively impacted returns to U.S. investors. The only commodity I'm currently thinking has a chance of providing major excess returns is corn. It's headed for the biggest gain in five weeks as weather conditions in South America endanger corn and bean crops. For more ETF trading ideas read the attached update and ... Happy trading! Rudy Leading stocks in the week included: Empresas ICA S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE:ICA) +15% Compania de Minas Buenaventura S.A. (NYSE:BVN) +14% Braskem (NYSE:BAK) +11% [This represents over a 25% move for Braskem in just two weeks as the world economic picture improves too!!] If you can not see the file download button and link below for this posting it is because you are not logged in. Login or subscribe to see and download the latest trade ideas. It takes only 2 minutes to subscribe.