Single-Country ETFs…And The Winner Is….

Single-country exchange traded funds (ETFs) can be a good investment for portfolios, however, picking which country is a hard decision. There are many factors to consider like reward-to-risk, performance comparison, pullbacks and time frames, as well as local politics and economics. Matthew D. McCall for Seeking Alpha analyzed 25 single-country ETFs and came up with four that were worthy of the reward-to-risk setup. The winners are, in order of reward-to-risk opportunity:

1. iShares MSCI Spain (EWP) gained 48% in 2006 compared to 13.6% for the S&P; up 22.8% year-to-date, while the S&P 500 is down 0.8%%.
2. iShares MSCI Germany (EWG) gained 32% in 2006, and is up 26.9% year-to-date.
3. iPath MSCI India ETN (INP) year-to-date up 65.4%, and only began trading in December 2006.
4. iShares MSCI Malaysia (EWM) returned 33% in 2006, and is up 32.3% so far this year.