Investing Update | May 14 2012 The Internet Market Growth Potential in Latin America is outrageous, especially in Brazil! Let me stress this point – there are probably few things growing faster or more consistently than the U.S. national debt. One of these is – The World-Wide Internet. I wish I had an Internet Growth Clock like the National Debt Clock to illustrate this unstoppable growth. ComScore reports Latin America’s online population grew faster than any other global region in 2011 - continuing to surprise everyone forecasting Asia's ascendency to this role. Key insights from Comscore's 2012 Latin America Future in Focus include: Latin America’s online population grew faster than any other global region in 2011, rising 16 percent to 129.3 million visitors in December 2011. Latin America is home to five of the most engaged social networking markets worldwide. Internet users in Argentina averaged 10.7 hours on social networking sites in December 2011, followed by Chile (9.5 hours per visitor), Peru (8.7 hours), Colombia (7.6 hours) and Mexico (7.1 hours). Google Sites (GOOG) reigned as the most-visited property in December 2011, reaching 123.4 million visitors in the region, while Facebook.com (FB) led as the most-engaging web property accounting for 25 percent of all time spent online. Latin Americans continue to display a strong propensity for search. In 2011, the total number of searches conducted increased 38 percent to more than 21 billion in December. With an average of 173 searches per searcher, Latin America leads the globe in search frequency. Mobile phones and tablets continue to account for a growing amount of digital traffic, with Puerto Rico leading the region with 7.7 percent of all digital traffic consumed away from a personal computer. Apple led across nearly all markets in share of non-computer traffic fueled by the iPhone and iPad. Fueled by the holiday shopping season, online retail visitation jumped 30 percent as more Latin Americans turned to the web to shop and purchase goods and services. Among retail categories, comparison shopping had the highest penetration with nearly 1 in 4 online users visiting these sites in December 2011. And the growth will continue. Now over 40% of Latin America's population has access to the internet. An increase to a 50% penetration could add an additional 30 million potential online consumers. There's an investment angle here that can be played through MercadoLibre (MELI). Consider how it impacts MercadoLibre's existing market share. This translates to another 6 million to 7 million visitors to its sites; a close-to effective 20% growth without changing a thing! Plus with a dominant position in Brazil, MELI will also benefit from the continuing economic upturn there. And there's even more boosting the growth for MELI. The population in Brazil and the rest of Latin America is growing faster than the U.S or world averages. The reaction to this and recent earnings is ridiculous. MercadoLibre (MELI) profiled in this update, is down big time this week - so clearly this is a buying opportunity for longer term investors. For more emerging markets investing and trading ideas like this one, download the attached update and ... Happy trading! Rudy The highest gaining stocks in the week included: Banco Macro SA (NYSE:BMA) +5,1% Industrias Bachoco, S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE:IBA) +3.3% Banco Santander Brasil SA (NYSE:BSBR) +3.3% If you can not see the file download button and link below for this posting it is because you are not logged in. Login or subscribe to see and download the latest trade ideas. It takes only 2 minutes to subscribe. read more