My picks for world's scariest stocks

The Motley Fool (fool.com) has an entertaining contest going on right now, to find the "World's Scariest Stock":

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/10/30/the-worlds-scariest-stocks.aspx

My own vote:

SCARY: Crocs, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, Palm, Research in Motion and Sirius XM Radio (Palm and RIM basically because, in the long run, they will not be able to compete with Apple and Google).

SCARY AWESOME: Baidu, First Solar, Goldman Sachs and Pfizer.

It is interesting to note that of last year's top 10 scariest stocks, only Citigroup and First Solar underperformed the market. Starbucks actually returned 80 %, whilst Dendreon (a biotech company) returned nearly 500 %!

Happy Halloween!

Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela in severe recession; Peru and Uruguay still growing

The IMF has published its World Economic Outlook (October 2009).

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2009/02/pdf/text.pdf

It is forecasting a contraction of -2.5 % for Latin America (on average), and a recovery of 2.9 % in 2010.

The only two countries forecast to show growth in 2009 are Peru (+1.5 %) and Uruguay (0.6 %).

On the other hand, Mexico will fall by -7.3 % (and that might be an underestimation.

Argentina will contract by -2.5 %, and Venezuela by -2.0 %. Although these, again, could be underestimates.

"Especially significant export revenue losses were experienced by the energy-intensive economies of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Trinidad and Tobago".