The complete list of utility ADRs with their current dividend yields and 2009 returns are listed below:

click to enlarge

The complete list of Brazil ADRs traded in the U.S. organized exchanges are listed below:

The complete list of Brazil ADRs traded on U.S. exchanges is listed below:

A reader left a question asking what I thought about the iShares Emerging Markets Infrastructure ETF (EMIF), a client holding, now that Brazil won the 2016 summer Olympics and early reports say that about half the necessary facilities still need to be built.

CNBC certainly devoted a lot of air time to whether or not the Olympics makes Brazil an even more compelling investment destination than it had previously been.

My Quick Clean Energy Tracking Portfolio has produced unexpected out-performance. Is it because of high beta (β) in a rising market?

I recently asked why two portfolios which I had designed to track green energy mutual funds ended up out-performing them by a wide margin.

My Quick Clean Energy Tracking Portfolio continues to outperform all benchmarks and expectations... is it luck, or did I stumble onto a better way to invest in green energy stocks?

I continue to be stunned at how the portfolio which I intended as an easy way to duplicate green energy mutual fund performance at much lower cost continues to blow those green mutual funds out of the water. I last published an update on this portfolio at the end of May, and was shocked to find that it had beaten the funds it was intended to replicate by over 20% in 3 months. The trend continues... it's now almost 7 months later, and the portfolio has widened its lead over the mutual funds by 30%.

Stocks discussed on the in-depth session of Jim Cramer's Mad Money TV Program, Wednesday August 5.

LUVMW Spells Diversification: Pepsico (PEP), Procter & Gamble (PG), Schlumberger (SLB), Devon Energy (DVN), SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), Agnico Eagle Mines (AEM), Randgold Resources (GOLD), CPLF Energia (CPL), Cemig (CIG), TransCanada (TRP), StatoilHydro (STO)

Stocks discussed on the in-depth session of Jim Cramer's Mad Money TV Program, Monday August 3.

CPLF Energia (CPL), Cemig (CIG)

Some months ago during the difficult moments of the financial crisis, Morgan Stanley (MS) (Snapshot Report) issued a report forecasting a GDP contraction of 4.5% for Brazil in 2009. We always had a more benign view on emerging markets in general and Brazil in particular.

We had been stressing that: (i) the Brazilian banking system remains sound, (ii) domestic interest rates have huge room for cuts and (iii) Brazil is still a "closed" country which does not rely overly much on exports and imports. All this together points to a more positive economic environment in Brazil in 2009, if compared to more developed economies like those in Europe, the U.S. and Japan.

By Claudio Freitas

As we expected, yesterday the Brazilian real went through the psychological barrier of BRL/US$ 2.00 without major problems. The continued acquisitions of dollars by the Brazilian Central Bank were not strong enough to prevent the appreciation of the Brazilian currency.

My Quick Clean Energy Tracking Portfolio has solidly outperformed its benchmark... was it bad design?

On February 27, I used the top holdings of the (then six) clean energy mutual funds to design a tracking portfolio intended to replicate the performance of those funds at much lower cost. If my methodology was sound, the tracking portfolio should produce returns within the range of returns of the mutual funds on which it was based. If all went well, the returns would be at the upper end of that range because of the way I chose to emphasize stocks which had underperformed over the previous three years.

Foreign utility stocks have performed well off the lows seen in March this year, similar to the financial sector. While the financial sector gets most of the media attention due to the stress-tests in the US, as well as bailouts and other events, I wanted to find out how the foreign utility sector was performing since the March lows. The results of my research are displayed below in table form.

Performance of foreign utilities since March lows:

In a previous article I outlined a strategy to approximately replicate the performance of a Clean Energy mutual fund at much lower cost, with only a couple hours of effort. I gave a cost example based on $5000 invested in 5 stocks, with another $1000 worth of a single stock added in each subsequent year.

This is the procedure I would use to select the initial five stocks.

During bear markets utility stocks used to provide shelter for investors since they were considered to be stable, slow-growth and conservative investments. However that has changed in the past few years. These days they do not seem to offer the much-desired stability and protection that they were once known for. This is evident in the current market as well.

Year-to-date the S&P 500 is down 38.96% and the Utilities sub-sector within the index is down 29.82%. Though this is less than the S&P 500, the sector is still down around 30% for the year - which is very high for this sector. On the other hand, the best performing sector, consumer-staples, is down only 17.02%. On the global level, the SPDR SP International Utilities Sector ETF (IPU), started in July of this year, has a negative return of 29.09% year-to-date.

This article will review the eight Latin American utility stocks that trade in the New York Stock Exchange. Brazil dominates this list with four stocks, while Chile and Argentina each have two stocks.

People invest in utility stocks for their dividend yields. Unlike other sectors, utility stocks tend to provide some stability to a well-diversified portfolio. Some would argue that this assumption might not be true these days due to many risky strategies followed by utilities. There are many risks to consider when investing in emerging market utilities such as political risk, currency risk, and interest rate risk. Therefore, caution is warranted before picking up some of the stocks mentioned in this piece. For example, countries like Argentina have had their share of economic upheavals.

Here is a list of the best performing American Depository Receipt [ADR] stocks Year-To-Date:

With new developments occurring in Brazil and elsewhere on a seemingly regular basis, we once again put a few questions to Zacks senior Latin American markets analyst Claudio Freitas, CFA about his outlook for the regions.

As you had been expecting for the past year or so, Brazil has finally been considered “investment grade.” What does this mean for the growth-oriented country?

...but be smart and take the short-term profits.

There will be plenty of time to position yourself for the long term once the S&P investment grade upgrade starts to make a real impact on the Brazilian economy. However the chances of hot money sloshing in tomorrow are pretty high, with articles such as this one linked here predicting 25% index gains for 2008 fuelling the sheep money fire (remember the ADRs traded in New York yesterday, but the Brazilian markets were closed for May Day).

If you are looking for stability and growth in Brazilian investments, check out these Brazilian utility stocks:

CPFL Energia S.A. (CPL) is one of the largest companies that provides electric generation and distribution in Brazil. The company is composed of CPFL Brasil, CPFL Pirantininga, CPFL Paulista, CPFL Geracao and SEMESA. It is headquartered in Campinas, Sao Paulo, and is the 44th largest Brazilian company in terms of sales.