This from Money Morning:

The iShares MSCI Brazil Index (NYSE:EWZ), an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that was the topic of the popular “Buy, Sell or Hold” feature on Monday, surged as much as 31% in the first three days of this week.

The shares, which closed Friday at $29.94, traded as high as $37.25 in late afternoon trading yesterday (Wednesday) – at that point representing an aggregate gain of 31% in the week’s first three days.

The ETF ended yesterday’s trading session at $35.89, an increase of $2.31 per share, or 6.88% for the day. At that closing price, EWZ shares had logged a gain of $4.05 a share, or 14%, since Money Morning Contributing Editor Horacio Marquez recommended the ETF in his Monday column.

Marquez is also the editor of the newly created Money Moves Alert trading service.

“Brazil is going to be a global powerhouse,” Marquez said in an interview yesterday. “Where else can you invest directly in the global oil industry, as you can here with Petrobras (ADR NYSE:PBR)? In fact, they play in all the key commodity sectors, including iron ore” – a key ingredient in steelmaking, by virtue of the Brazil-based Vale (ADR NYSE:RIO), formerly known as Companhia Vale Rio.

Brazil has $200 billion in foreign-exchange reserves, is conservatively managed, has kept its interest rates well above its inflation rate, has seen its debt get upgraded to investment grade, and recently allowed its currency – the Real – to depreciate, a move that will transform the country into an exporting force, he said.

Marquez isn’t the only Money Morning editor with bullish views on Brazil. Martin Hutchinson, a veteran international banker who is a regular columnist for Money Morning, detailed Brazil’s debt-rating increase back in May, penned a two-part series on the so-called “BRIC” economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China) back in August, listed six of that country’s most-alluring profit plays in a report that just ran on Friday and then included Brazil as one of four “safe haven” markets in a column he wrote yesterday.

[To read Marquez’s full “Buy, Sell or Hold” column on Brazil, please click here. To read Hutchinson’s “Safe Haven” column, which mentions Brazil and three other promising overseas markets, please click here. Both reports are free of charge.]

Source: Buy, Sell or Hold Update: Brazil ETF Featured Monday Soars as Much as 31% in Three Trading Days

Citigroup strategist Geoffrey Dennis forecast the Bovespa stock index may drop to 65,000 by ‘mid-summer’ from the May 30 close of 72,592.50. The index fell 1 percent to 71,897.25. The New York-based strategist kept his end-year forecast for the Bovespa at 74,000.

“Our mid-summer sell-off is 65,000 on the Bovespa, based on a big pullback in domestics, as interest rates and inflation rise,” the strategist wrote in a note to clients. So-called domestic stocks are shares in the consumer, industrial, utility, financial and telecom industries.

Sandy Franks in Taipan Daily, however, says that Brazil is an essential addition to your investment portfolio.

“Not only that, but investing in Brazil is a great way to protect your money against the falling U.S. dollar, the slumping U.S. economy, and the risky U.S. stock markets. And because Brazil’s economy is growing leaps and bounds, a modest investment today could grow fivefold in the coming years.

“Let me put it this way: To ignore investment opportunities in Brazil would be a horrendous mistake that could cost you dearly.”

Read on here to learn how to make maximum profit from a blue chip Brazilian mining conglomerate.