It may surprise you that based on recent data from EPFR Global of global equity managers including investments in ETFs, that Brazil not China is the country that has the largest allocation. The iShares MSCI Brazil ETF (EWZ) is up 19% year-to-date.
China in fact remained the biggest underweight at 2.44 % followed by Taiwan, Korea, Chile, Israel, Russia and Poland. Brazil, the leading fund overweight, saw its average overweight climb 6 basis points to 2.09%. Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia and Mexico rounded out the top five underweights among EPFR-tracked funds. . Despite its economic and political missteps, Thailand remained among the ranks of the overweights going into April. And it was joined by Hungary, a regular underweight in recent years due to its large current account deficit.
Thanks to is soaring equity market Brazil stood out in what was otherwise another month of modest month-on-month shifts for country allocations among the major emerging markets fund groups. Brazil’s average weighting was up 101 basis points among Latin America Equity Funds. The volatility shown by key Chinese indexes during March had a modest impact: its average weighting was up 4 basis points among global equity funds and down 49 points among Asia ex-Japan Funds. Both of these fund groups cut their average Taiwan weighting by over 30 basis points, bringing it down to its lowest level since the third quarter of 2004.
By ETF Daddy
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