As the ETF universe has expanded dramatically over the last several years, many investors have taken advantage of this asset class to tap into international equity markets. With single-country ETFs dedicated to dozens of developed and emerging markets, accessing the major (and not-so-major) stock markets around the globe has never been easier.
When evaluating international equity ETFs–as with all ETFs–it is important to take a look under the hood and fully understand what the portfolio includes. Below, we highlight a few relatively common characteristics of international stock ETFs that might be somewhat disconcerting to investors [for more ETF insights, sign up for the free ETFdb newsletter]: [click to continue…]
This past year has shaped out to be nothing short of a roller coaster ride for investors. Confidence in the global economic recovery was rattled after disaster struck in Japan; waves of uncertainty spread across financial markets as the economic superpower coped with one of the worst earthquakes in its history. On the home front, [...]
Investors can’t seem to catch a break this week as sentiment continues to sway from fearful to hopeful, paving the way for profit taking and choppy trading across all markets. The spotlight remains fixated on the debt burdened Euro zone and investors worries continue to overshadow the encouraging economic data releases at home. Positive news [...]
Resurfacing Italian debt woes paved the way for persistent volatility in the markets last week, further deteriorating the economic outlook of the financially fragile currency bloc. Selling pressures overwhelmed the bulls on Wall Street, despite a host of better-than-expected economic data releases on the home front, including surprisingly strong retail sales, new home starts, industrial [...]
All aboard the roller coaster! Market activity this past week was all sorts of absurd; equity indexes fluctuated wildly between huge gains one day and devastating losses the next. Investors are still visibly shaken from the debt ceiling drama of last week coupled with S&P’s downgrade of U.S. credit quality, which triggered a brutal sell [...]
Monday was a dismal day on Wall Street as investors prepared for the worst and ran far from equity markets after the release of S&P’s downgrade of U.S. credit quality to AA+ from its coveted AAA rating. Panic-selling caught on like wildfire and domestic equity indexes slid by as much as 6% on Monday alone, [...]
Wall Street plunged into the abyss last week as investors prepared for the worst after the ECB and Bank of Japan intervened in the markets, sending widespread waves of fear, and inducing one of the worst sell-offs that the market has seen since the dismal days of 2008. Domestic equity indexes fell over 4% on [...]
This past week was another wild one for markets as a number of earnings reports combined with debt crises to create a very choppy couple of days. While worries over a debt deal in the U.S. and concerns over a European debt contagion may have weighed on markets, most equities managed to finish the week [...]
Emerging market investing has been extremely rocky in 2011, as fears over inflation and political issues have plagued nations around the world. Broad-based funds such as VWO or EEM are still down for the year while ETFs tracking important emerging nations such as China and India are seeing even stiffer losses in the period. One [...]
The universe of emerging market ETFs has evolved rapidly over the past few years, as new exchange traded vehicles have opened the doors to a number of developing countries and allowed for increased granularity in sculpting international equity exposure. During the gradual recovery efforts of 2009 and 2010, it was emerging markets that led the [...]
The month of May was a generally disappointing stretch for investors, as both international and domestic equity markets struggled to overcome obstacles new and old. Commodities, which had been a nice source of absolute returns for much of the last year, fell on hard times as well; precious metals went into a brief freefall, and [...]
