Latin American ETFs Flying Under the Radar
In keeping with Monday’s theme of Latin America where we highlighted EWW (iShares MSCI Mexico, Expense Ratio 0.52%) and related funds, today we focus on several single country ETFs in the region that may fly under the radar (i.e. funds that are not dedicated to Mexico nor Brazil).
ECH (iShares MSCI Chile, Expense Ratio 0.59%) and EPU (iShares MSCI All Peru Capped, Expense Ratio 0.59%) are two examples of such specialized funds and both have respectable levels of assets under management at $609 million and $418 million respectively.
Other ETFs that come to mind include GXG (Global X FTSE Colombia 20, Expense Ratio 0.78%), ARGT (Global X FTSE Argentina 20, Expense Ratio 0.75%), and COLX (Market Vectors Colombia, Expense Ratio 0.75%) which are substantially smaller in terms of both assets under management as well as average daily trading volume levels when compared to some of the larger funds in the space that are dedicated to say Brazil, Mexico, or broad Latin America.
ARGT has had an exceptionally difficult time performance wise in comparison to broader Latin America and other single country funds, and simply has not participated in the trailing one year period, off more than 20%.
In fact, all of the funds mentioned above have registered negative return numbers in the trailing one year period with the exception of EWW, which as we mentioned yesterday, is among one of the better performers across all equities during this time frame.
Currently there are twenty six ETFs classified in the “Latin America” category, with many of these funds having debuted within the past five years, demonstrating the clear innovation that is occurring in this segment of the ETF marketplace.
Not surprisingly, at the moment the bulk of the assets under management reside with the most tenured funds in the space, including EWZ (iShares MSCI Brazil, Expense Ratio 0.60%), EWW (iShares MSCI Mexico, Expense Ratio 0.52%), and ILF (iShares S&P Latin America 40, Expense Ratio 0.50%), which collectively have accumulated greater than $12 billion in AUM.
For more information on Street One ETF research and ETF trade execution/liquidity services, contact Paul Weisbruch at pweisbruch@streetonefinancial.com.
