{"id":32520,"date":"2012-09-24T21:40:44","date_gmt":"2012-09-25T01:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/2012\/09\/etf-play-access-to-africa\/"},"modified":"2012-09-24T21:40:44","modified_gmt":"2012-09-25T01:40:44","slug":"etf-play-access-to-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2012\/09\/24\/etf-play-access-to-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"ETF Play: Access to Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

By The Sizemore Letter<\/a><\/p>\n

As I wrote last week<\/a>, the central bankers of the world are staging a monetary arms race to see who can pump more liquidity into the world economy.\u00a0 ECB President Mario Draghi and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke have each taken turns upstaging the other.<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s Japan\u2019s turn.\u00a0 The world\u2019s third-most-powerful central bank has joined the fight, launching a fresh round of monetary stimulus of its own.\u00a0 The Bank of Japan is expanding its asset purchase scheme by another 10 trillion yen to a full 80 trillion\u2014or about $1.02 trillion in US dollars.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t expect this to be the last shot fired.\u00a0 The ever quotable Guido Mantega, Brazil\u2019s finance minister, has reiterated his claim that the world is in a \u201ccurrency war.\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019s also made it clear that Brazil does not plan on losing it, meaning that Brazil will resort to loose monetary policies too in order to prevent Brazil\u2019s currency from getting unmanageably expensive.<\/p>\n

What does any of this mean for investors?\u00a0 In an interview<\/a> with the Financial Times<\/em> this week, Mantega said that \u201crisk aversion had fallen and animal spirits have increased.\u201d<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t have said it better myself.\u00a0 Until the market shows any real signs of weakening, I recommend that investors maintain an aggressive portfolio.\u00a0 And right now, this would include frontier markets such as Africa and the Middle East.\u00a0 I recommend investors pick up shares of the Market Vectors Africa Index ETF ($<\/span>AFK<\/a>)<\/strong> and plan to hold for the remainder of 2012.\u00a0 As always, use a stop loss that is appropriate for your risk tolerance.<\/p>\n

This piece originally appeared on Trader Planet<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Related posts:<\/p>\n