Does anyone currently know of any good BRIC funds? I have seen some that are mostly China and Brazil with very little Russian and Indian exposure… Let me know if you know of some that are well diversified and have reasonable fees
Maybe you’d want to use country ETFs and build your own? EEB and BIK came up on my search for BRIC etfs, but I don’t see the distribution of country exposure right away. EWZ is Brazil INP and IFN gives you India (though these are exchange traded notes and closed end funds) China has some standard stuff Russia has always been the one that’s hard to do: I see RSX and TRF. TRF has eastern yurop in it too. I’ve been thinking of adding South Africa to my watch list (EZA).
If anyone is interested, from what I can see, iShares sponsored BKF seems to be a decent play. China 36%, Brazil 28%, Russia 20% and India 16%. Top 10 holdings only make up 36% of entire portfolio… Expense ratio of 0.75
Are you doing buy and hold in a personal portfolio, or are you doing something more active?
im thinking long term buy and hold… i would be awfully surprised if something like this underperformed the S&P over a 5 or 10 year horizon…
I agree. I used to do development work, and it’s very interesting how things have evolved since the 1950’s and 60’s in terms of trade and investment thinking. I don’t think that the current mindset/orthodoxy is necessarily the full answer for poverty alleviation, inequalities, and technology transfer, but it’s certainly good for markets. So, buy and hold is a good idea, but we’re probably in for a correction sometime in the next 12 months, as people try to reallocate their capital away from developed markets and try to get their positions distributed.
BKF is your best bet I’d say in general. Just started about a month ago, hence isn’t the most liquid of ETF’s, but subcription will definetly only increase long term. Alot of people just know about it yet. http://www.ishares.com/fund_info/detail.jhtml;jsessionid=JVHY3QNH0040KRJUMTCBBGSFGQZJMD50?symbol=BKF Great play, though I’m nervous of Russia (long term) and India (more short term) a bit to be honest. China will have some issues next year with the olympics, I’m thinking the Chinesse market (which is in a bit of a bubble now in case any of you have been living on Jupiter) may take a 25-50% bath next year, so it would be a good time to load up on FXI for long term. For now, I’d stick to EWZ. You have a good consumer growth, petro, mineral story and a strong currency (BRL) to boot. You good say similar things as per above about EZA I’d have to say, though I know less about SA than I do Brazil. Political situation down there may be a bit more sticky?? There is also a new iShares Chilie index for those of you who are copper bulls. ECH. Same as BKF, new, not liquid yet. http://www.ishares.com/fund_info/detail.jhtml;jsessionid=JVHY3QNH0040KRJUMTCBBGSFGQZJMD50?symbol=ECH Still need to see a good Eastern Europe emerging market fund, and a good Middle East fund. I’ve heard these are coming from one of the providers.
I have zero interest in trying to time these markets short term. As I said, when I look back in 5 or 7 or 10 years, I am highly confident that it will have outperformed the US indices
Why limit it to BRIC? They’re all individually good countries, but if you want EM exposure, what about Korea, Eastern Europe, Latin America? Use EEM or individual country ETFs. Besides, China is bubblerific right now, not sure if you should be putting new money to work there.
Holdside has a good point. The Ukrainian market is up for more than 120% this year alone. I know that even Mitt Romney has some Gazprom shares. With the pretty-much certain election of Medvedev as Russian President next year, the Russian market is poised to go up, given that Medvedev lives up to his pro-business and pro-western inclination.
Yeah, unless you have specific views on countries, I think EEM probably does what you want. Personally, I think that S. Korea counts as a developed economy now, so if one wants to be a purist about it, one might try to short out the S. Korea exposure… but that may be more trouble than it’s worth. What I would really like is a way to backtest these indices in portfolio strategies - I am trying to develop some Country/Sector Tactical Asset Allocation models using ETFs, but the data is a challenge. I know many haven’t been in existence for long, but it would be helpful to estimate what these indices would have said if they had been constructed earlier.
highparkcfa Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Holdside has a good point. The Ukrainian market is > up for more than 120% this year alone. I know that > even Mitt Romney has some Gazprom shares. With the > pretty-much certain election of Medvedev as > Russian President next year, the Russian market is > poised to go up, given that Medvedev lives up to > his pro-business and pro-western inclination. In fairness, Gazprom is a huge holding of BKF. I agree with bchad about South Korea, and I’d argue the same about some of the other “emergings”. EEM is definetly a better passive startegy to emerging markets for small investors. Like I said, China is a bubble, but we all know its a good LT play (5-10 is my horizon when I hope to buy a house) and if China tanks as many people feel it will around the Olympics I would be buying. The great thing about a bubble is it goes to far up, but it will also come too far down.
I’d go with the Templeton BRIC Fund… Obviously its got a higher expense ratio, but the active management and experience of Dr. Mobius should provide much better downside protection than the ETFs.
CBQ-T but is CND currency
Now is a bad time to start a buy’n’hold strategy with emerging markets. Wait until there is blood on the street. Emerging markets have more downside than developed markets in a correction. So… buy during a correction! I’m not saying “don’t buy emerging markets”, i’m just saying now is not tactically a good time to start a passive buy’n’hold strategy for emerging markets. WSJ just did a good writeup of some CEFs that trade at a big discount and pay a fat dividend… it looks like they have some emerging market debt ones in there: FUND PRICE DISCOUNT YIELD Cohen & Steers Closed-End Oppty (FOF) 16.39 -6.9 8.6 Eaton Vance Tax Advtg Div. Inc. (EVT) 28.08 -11.8 6.5 Calamos Strategic Total Return (CSQ) 14.54 -9.6 8.5 DWS Global High Inc. (LBF) 8.46 -14.7 7.1 BlackRock Enhanced Cap. & Inc. (CII) 20.64 -8.4 9.4 BR Intl. Growth & Inc. (BGY) 17.35 -10.2 10.5 EV Enhanced Eq. Inc. (EOI) 18.78 -11.3 8.8 EV Tax Mgd Buy-Write Inc. (ETB) 17.9 -10.8 10.1 EV Tax Mgd Glob. Divers. Eq. Inc. (EXG) 16.68 -12.6 11.4 Morgan Stanley Em. Mkts Domestic Debt (EDD) 16.94 -13.2 11.8 Clough Global Opportunities (GLO) 18.04 -14.6 8.4 ING Asia Pac. High Div. Eq. Inc. (IAE) 23.25 -14.2 8.6
Chadwick, MSCI might have some data you can use for individual country performance: http://www.mscibarra.com/products/indices/stdindex/performance.html
Hey, this is great. I can visualize historical data on the indices, but I can’t see how to download histories. Do you need an expensive subscription for that? Are there corresponding index symbols that I can bring up on yahoo or google (or via XLQ with Excel)? Thanks!
Sorry no idea, but I’m guessing you gotta fork over $$$. At work I can look up some of the bigger MSCI indices in morningstar principia, but I don’t think it has most of the individual country ones.