With "Buy" and "Sell" Calls on Brazil ETF, Money Morning's Marquez Catches a 148% Move

By , Money Morning •

Among the many adages that longtime investors are probably familiar with is one that counsels “you’ll never buy at the very bottom and will never sell at the very top.”

But with his recent market calls on the iShares MSCI Brazil Index Exchange-Traded Fund (NYSE: EWZ) in his “Buy, Sell or Hold” column, Money Morning Contributing Editor Horacio Marquez may have done just that.

Back on Oct. 27, 2008, Marquez told readers of his popular "Buy, Sell or Hold" column that the iShares MSCI Brazil Index ETF was a "Buy." At the time, the ETF that's designed to reflect Brazil's overall stock market was trading at $29.94 a share.

But that’s not all: Marquez actually made his market call almost exactly at the market bottom for the Brazil ETF, which had actually closed at $100.47 a share on May 20, 2008. After achieving what would turn out to be the closing high for the year, EWZ started a slow decline that accelerated as the summer turned to fall.

By the time Marquez penned his column, the Brazilian ETF had plunged 70%, enabling him to make his “Buy” recommendation at what was essentially the bottom for that ETF.

And once he did so, the ETF’s share price began to rally almost immediately. Coincidentally, in the four days following the publication of his column, the ETF zoomed 31%.

As it turns out, that was just the start.

On Friday, Oct. 23, the ETF closed at $74.34, meaning it had zoomed 148% since Marquez’ original “Buy” column was published. That gain came almost in exactly 12 months.

 

On Monday (Oct. 26), in a Money Morning “Buy, Sell or Hold” column titled “It’s Time to Book Profits on Brazil,” Marquez told readers that the fund, if not the Brazilian market, had probably topped out. That market call was based on the ETF’s Friday closing price.

Marquez had pretty clearly called the market bottom for this fund. The question now becomes: With his call that Brazil was probably “topped out,” did Marquez call the market top, too?

Only time will tell, of course. But the early returns were impressive. By Wednesday, the ETF's share price had dropped to $66.91, a decline of $7.43 a share, or 10% from Marquez’s cautionary call from Monday.

[Editor’s Note: Commodities are hot. In some cases, white hot.

Oil, gold and silver are the hot commodities of today. But the shrewdest investors will look toward the horizon, and try to project just what the commodity profit plays of the future will be.

If you need help, just ask Money Morning’s Horacio Marquez.

As worries about oil escalate – whether those worries are about future supplies, future prices or global-warming – more and more muscle is being placed behind alternative power technologies. That’s especially true in the hybrid vehicle market, where a specific technology has emerged as the clear leader. The technology is lithium-based rechargeable batteries, and its emergence is sending lithium demand skyrocketing.

The profit potential of this market is stunning – but only for investors who can figure out the right way to play it.

Here’s the thing:  Marquez – a Money Morning contributing editor who also edits the Money Map VIP Trader – has uncovered the market leader.
This company is a global player with a solid market cap and is well known within the hybrid industry. But surprisingly few investors know about the company, or have ever even heard its name.

To learn more about this company – to get in ahead of the masses – and to find out more about Marquez’s Money Map VIP Trader, please click here.]

News and Related Story Links: