After noticing the potential for an asset bubble, investors have been pulling money out of Brazilian stocks and ETFs. Nevertheless, Brazil is proving to be a robust economy as both consumption and exports rise.

Angel Gurria, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) chief, said that there’s “a danger of asset bubbles in places like Brazil… and we should be careful about that,” as stated in MecroPress. The statement came as investors also noticed the risk and began funneling more than $500 million out of the Sao Paulo stock market in January.

Thursday’s freefall intensified fears that a double-dip has already begun, as many major benchmarks endured their worst single-session slide since April. Despite a qualified endorsement of Greece’s budget plan from the European Commission, worries of a meltdown in European credit markets sparked a global sell-off. Elsewhere, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed charges against Bank of America (BAC) and the retail sector reported impressive January results.

The ETFdb 60 Index dropped 21.14 points, or 2.1% for the session, recording its worst single-day percentage loss since its inception. Almost half of the index components lost at least 3% on the day, including every equity ETF. Bond indexes mostly gained on the day, perhaps the only silver lining in the bloodbath. The VIX shot up more than 20%, and the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) added more than 11%.

We previously examined the performance of various country-specific ETFs in 2010 and Japan (EWJ) and Russia (RSX) were standouts. This trend has shown no sign of abating, and may well continue throughout 2010. In particular Japan, which has been a "dead money" market for about 20 years now, may be poised for relative outperformance gains in 2010 vis-a-vis some other major country ETFs.

The other international ETFs profiled in the chart include India (PIN) in purple, Canada (EWC) in white, Australia (EWA) in blue, China (FXI) in green, Germany (EWG) in orange, and Brazil (EWZ) in yellow. Brazil is the laggard of these countries thus far this calendar year.