MacroScope

Noe Torres and Jean Luis Arce contributed to this post. Blog updated Sept 5 to add Q2 GDP data for Brazil and Mexico.

Three weeks ago, Mexico beat Brazil on Saturday to win its first-ever men’s football Olympic gold medal. What does that have to do with economics? Maybe nothing. But as The Economist notes, Mexico’s victory might just prove “just a warm-up for more good results to come” — on the economic field.

Mexico’s economy grew 4.1 percent in the second quarter from the year-earlier period. Even considering a mild slowdown from the previous quarter due to weaker U.S. demand, this growth pace far outshines Brazil’s lackluster performance since mid-2011.

Global manufacturers such as tire maker Pirelli and Volkswagen’s luxury car maker Audi have recently looked to Mexico as an alternative to China. Bucking a global trend of manufacturing weakness, Mexico’s industrial output jumped 1.3 percent in June from May, exceeding forecasts of most economists surveyed by Reuters.

Brazil, host of the 2016 Olympic Games, has been spinning its wheels as local manufacturers struggle with clogged roads and ports, exorbitant taxes and an overvalued exchange rate. Even with record low interest rates, Brazil’s economy expanded just 0.5 percent in the second quarter from the same period a year earlier, below the median forecast in a Reuters poll with analysts.

How quickly times change. Russia's stock market, unloved for months, last week overtook India to be the best-performing of
the four BRICs.  The Moscow stock index jumped 5 percent last week, posting its biggest weekly rise in seven months, bringing
year-to-date gains to 17.5 percent. Fund managers such as Goldman Sach's Jim O'Neill, creator of the BRICs term, are predicting it will lead the group next year too.

So what's with the sudden burst of enthusiasm for Moscow? One catalyst is of course soccer body FIFA's decision to award
the 2018 Soccer World cup to Russia. Investors are piling into infrastructure stocks, with steel producers especially tipped to
benefit as Russia starts building stadia, roads and hotels.  But the bigger factor, according to John Lomax, HSBC's head of emerging equity strategy, is the optimism that has started creeping in about U.S. -- and world economic growth.

Some of that may have been dampened by Friday's lacklustre U.S. jobs data. But overall, checks of U.S. economic vital signs show the economy looking sturdier than it was six months ago and most banks, including the pessimists at Goldman Sachs, have upped 2011 growth forecasts for the world's biggest economy. And China and India are continuing to grow at rates close to 10 percent.  All that is great news for the commodity and oil stocks -- the mainstay of the Russian market. Merrill Lynch, for instance, expects oil prices to be $10 higher by next December than now.