Yesterday we tackled Brazil and the recent momentum there, particularly in benchmark ETF EWZ (iShares MSCI Brazil, Expense Ratio 0.61%) so we will stick with theme to some degree and look at broader Latin America.
EWZ is still the largest ETF in the “Latin America” category, and by a decent margin with its $5.1 billion in AUM as compared to the next largest fund EWW (iShares MSCI Mexico, Expense Ratio 0.48%) which has $3.2 billion in assets under management.
On Monday EWW traded at its highest level since the spring of 2013, so recent equity strength is not relegated solely to Brazil. We emphasize that both EWZ and EWW are both mega to large cap oriented funds, where EWZ has more than 41% of its overall portfolio weighting to such names and EWW has more than 75% of its exposure to mega and large caps.
Top holdings in EWW include ordinary shares of America Movil SAB de CV Class L (>15.6%), Fomento Economico Mexicano SAB de CV Units (>6.5%), and Grupo Televisa SAB Ord. (>6.1%). ILF (iShares Latin America 40, Expense Ratio 0.50%) is an important fund to monitor when trading Latin American markets as well, and over time this fund has grown into a $1.2 billion fund, and it likely has room to grow given the aforementioned interest in trading both Brazil and Mexico observable through the popularity of EWZ and EWW. ILF is heavily weighted to Brazil (>55%) with a nearly 28% weighting to Mexico.
There are smaller exposures to Chile, Colombia, and Peru for instance. Smaller single country funds in this space are ECH (iShares MSCI Chile, Expense Ratio 0.61%) and EPU (iShares MSCI All Peru, Expense Ratio 0.62%), as well as Colombia focused funds like GXG (Global X Interbolsa FTSE Colombia 20, Expense Ratio 0.68%), ICOL (iShares MSCI Colombia, Expense Ratio 0.61%) and COLX (Market Vectors Colombia, Expense Ratio 0.75%). Argentina comes to mind here as well, having recently been in the news on several occasions, so we typically watch ARGT (Global X FTSE Argentina 20, Expense Ratio 0.75%).