Thanks to weak growth prospects, sky-high unemployment, and massive debt burdens in much of the developed world, many investors have begun to shed their “home country bias” by turning to emerging markets as a primary driver of growth within their portfolios. But while growth prospects in the BRIC and smaller emerging markets are significantly brighter than the U.S. and western Europe, the developing economies of the world face their own obstacles. Brazil, for example, has been a popular investment destination in recent years; the country’s immense natural resources and strengthening trade relationship with Chine have boosted equity markets over the last 18 months. But Brazil has fallen far behind even its emerging market counterparts in terms of infrastructure investment, an oversight that could leave the surging country in a perilous position. [click to continue…]
Once upon a time, almost all ETFs offering exposure to international equity markets consisted of the largest and most liquid stocks traded in a specific country or region. Because financial institutions and oil companies tend to be the largest companies by market capitalization, most international ETFs maintain heavy tilts towards these sectors. But the last [...]
To say that the current environment is a challenging one for investors is quite the understatement. With Europe teetering on the brink of a sovereign debt crisis, a “new normal” low growth environment in the U.S., and increasing anxiety over government policies in China, there are numerous potholes in the road ahead for many of [...]
Richard Kang is the Chief Investment Officer and Director of Research at Emerging Global Advisors, LLC. He recently took time out of his busy schedule to talk about emerging market ETFs with ETF Database. ETF Database (ETFdb): Historically, most asset allocation strategies have called for U.S. investors to make significant allocations to U.S. equities. Are [...]
Over the past decade, investors have piled into investment vehicles that track the so-called BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. These economies have generally been very good to investors, with many BRIC-focused funds producing solid gains over the years that have far outpaced more developed markets. However, not all of the BRIC building [...]
Brazil has been one of the big winners of the rally in global equity markets over the last year, as the BRIC economic bloc established its position as the leader in the economic recovery. Strong demand for raw materials in other developing economies fueled an impressive rebound, and the selection of Rio de Janeiro as [...]
The SPDR S&P Russia ETF (RBL) began trading on Thursday, becoming just the second U.S.-listed ETF offering exposure to one of the world’s largest countries and most unique economies. RBL will seek to track the performance of the S&P Russia Capped BMI Index, a float adjusted market cap-weighted benchmark consisting of publicly-traded companies domiciled in [...]
The ETF industry came flying out of the gates in January with more than two dozen new product launches and several more new product filings. Although the pace slowed a bit in February, the ETF universe continues to expand at an impressive rate, keeping 2010 on track to be the most active in the history [...]
A week after launching the China Infrastructure ETF (CHXX), Emerging Global Advisors introduced the Brazil Infrastructure ETF (BRXX) on Wednesday. BRXX is the first exchange-traded product to offer sector-specific exposure to Brazilian equity markets, and will seek to replicate the performance of the INDXX Brazil Infrastructure Index. This benchmark is a free-float capitalization weighted benchmark [...]
