Latin America Strategy Notebook
An Historic Rally: 2003 Redux?
Historic Rally — The 10-week 60% gain in MSCI Latin America since early-March
has been one of the strongest and most sustainable rallies in the history of the
region. The 2-month rally of 52% to May 8 was the fastest since spring 1995.
Investor Underperformance/Small Cap Outperformance — Many investors have
underperformed the benchmark in this rally. In part, this has been a “junk rally”;
small-cap stocks have outperformed, similar to the rally from February 2003. A
parallel with that period suggests this rally could go much further over time.
Pause/Correction Risk Remains — We continue to see the risk of a modest nearterm
pause/correction, which we would use to add beta to regional markets.
Macro Support — The support for this rally is improving global macro data and
hints that the macro downgrade process may soon end. We split countries into
those where GDP growth troughed in Q4 and those where Q1 falls were steeper.
Macro Favors Brazil and Chile — Brazil (GDP forecast to fall by 1.5% in 2009) and
Chile (-0.2%) look set to record positive growth before Mexico (forecast cut again
to -6.2%). This drives our preference for Brazilian equities over those in Mexico.
Strategy — We remain Overweight in Brazil (Overweight in Financials – new –
Materials and Technology) and Peru; Underweight in Mexico (Overweight only in
defensive Consumer Staples) and Chile. We would also use any market pullback to
add some small-cap stocks (under US$2.5bn); our current Focus List small-cap
names are: Cosan, TAM, Copa Airlines and Cementos Lima.
Losing Steam? 3
CIRA Latin America Model Portfolio 5
Forecasted Returns, Valuations, and Performance 6
An Historic Rally: 2003 Redux? 9
Appendix 21
Citi Latin America Economic Forecasts 23
Charts of the Week 25
Return of Risk 25
Sell in May and Go Away? A History 25
Metals 25
Survey of Citi Research 26
Global Macro / Strategy 26
Top Picks Live! 26
Stocks 26
Country Sheets 27
Brazil 27
Mexico 29
Chile 30
Peru 30
Argentina 31
Latin America Equity Research and Sales 32
Appendix A-1 36