Foreign

With the economy still showing concern in the U.S. and job rates still high, many investors are looking at equity investments outside the US. One of the easiest ways of investing internationally is with Exchange-Traded Funds or ETFs. Of the roughly 1,500 ETFs available to trade, there are 7 large ones that focus on international markets.

It seems that there are legitimate studies that show that a countries loss in a major sports competition like the World Cup can adversely affect that countries stock markets the next day says an article in MarketWatch.

This week iShares launched a new emerging markets ETF, ticker EEMS,  which is intended to track the MSCI Emerging Markets Small Cap Index.  The top three countries represented in terms of holding are currenty Taiwan, Korea, and China. The top three country sector exposure weightings are currently consumer discretionary, industrials, and financials. For original article, [...]

Exchange traded equity funds saw outflows in excess of $2.17 billion in the week that ended on Feb 2. US based funds saw inflow of $4.2 billion during the same period. Investors are shying away from investing wholly in emerging markets. The global economic crisis in 2008 saw investors preferring emerging markets as investment destinations. [...]

BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE: BLK) today announced that the iShares Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) business, the world’s largest provider of ETFs, launched three new iShares emerging markets ETFs on the NYSE Arca. The new funds are the iShares MSCI Brazil Small Cap Index Fund (EWZS), iShares MSCI China Small Cap Index Fund (ECNS) and the iShares [...]

BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE: BLK) today announced that the iShares Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) business, the world’s largest provider of ETFs, launched the iShares MSCI New Zealand Investable Market Index Fund (ENZL) on the NYSE Arca today.

As reported by Bloomberg, Canada’s currency has declined for three weeks in a row relative to the US dollar, attributed in the article to the threat of an economic slowdown in the U.S. resulting in lower commodity prices. Canada does more trade with the U.S. than any other country, and with the recent decline in [...]

Delta Global Indices, LLC has developed a global index comprised of developed markets in the maritime shipping industry, and Claymore has just released an ETF to track the performance. The Webwire article identifies the new ETF as Claymore/Delta Global Shipping Index ETF (SEA), which has just begun trading on the NYSE Arca. The index focuses [...]

The trading volume of currency ETFs has increased substantially as the U.S. dollar is making strides. In recent weeks, the dollar has climbed to a five-month high, and foreign currency investors have responded by selling large amounts of their ETF shares. Trang Ho of Investor’s Business Daily highlights the performance of PowerShares DB U.S. Dollar [...]

The ETF trading volume on the NASDAQ exchanges during July 2008 proved to be a record performance. The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. has provided statistics for the U.S. and Nordic exchanges in the Prime Newswire press release. The NASDAQ exchange in the U.S. carried more ETF volume than any other U.S. exchange in the month [...]