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June 01, 2008 at 04:00 AM
The number of foreign-market ETFs continues to expand as investors look to diversify their portfolios away from U.S. stocks.
Barclays Global Investors (BGI) launched five new iShares international exchange traded funds (ETFs) in April. Among the new funds are the iShares MSCI Israel, Thailand and Turkey index funds. These are the first ETFs to cover those particular markets. Also launched is the iShares MSCI ACWI (All Country World Index) and MSCI ACWI ex-US Index Funds. Both ETFs provide broad global exposure with benchmarks that are widely used and highly regarded by institutional investors.
“While international investing has become nearly commonplace, many U.S. investors remain heavily weighted in domestic securities,” said Noel Archard, head of U.S. iShares Product Development. “Non-U.S. markets account for approximately 57 percent of the world’s equity market capitalization and performance of these markets continues to differ from the U.S. market.”
Archard added, “These new ETFs will help investors who wish to access both broad or narrow exposures to global equities do so in one cost-efficient trade. Investing in emerging market countries offers investors attractive diversification benefits relative to single stock investments, and our new ACWI-based offering will nicely round out the excellent coverage we provide across broad-based international investments.”
