As the global economy experiences worldwide economic slowdown, different exchange traded funds (ETFs) do not seem to be drawing to much attention to themselves.

Gary Gordon of ETF Expert points out that certain ETFs that are simply not shown any love. The iShares MSCI Australia Index Fund (EWA) is a fund that lacks attention and looks less attractive amid climbing fuel prices, growing mortgage payments and rising interest rates. With Australia looking less attractive by the minute, stimulus may be needed to keep slow growth from turning into no growth.

EWA is down 17.1% year-to-date, with its 35% weighting in financials and another 30% in materials. It’s down 5.3% in the last month.

The iShares Global Materials Fund (MXI) has also fallen to some hard times, despite some of its holdings reporting record earnings. MXI has simply been hit by sector rotation moving from strengths into weaknesses. Nearly every company is a winner, or will merge with a bigger winner. Investors feel that they could see a technical rebound, or at best, they believe fundamentals will drive the shares higher with belief in global economic expansion.

MXI is down 13.1% year-to-date and 12.9% in the last month, even as most companies included have a positive future outlook.

The SPDR Retail (XRT) and the Retail HOLDRs (RTH) have outperformed major U.S. benchmarks this year. Many market analysts feel as though these funds have been able to weather the storm by riding on the success of the discounter giant Wal Mart (WMT). Examining the long term trends of these funds could lead one to ignore what media says about the domestic retail sector. If these funds break above their 200-day moving averages, trusting these long-term trends could be much more promising.

XRT is down 3.8% year-to-date and RTH is up 3.9% for the yearl in the last month, the are respectively up 16.4% and 13%.

Tags: Australia, EWA, MXI, Retail, RTH, Sector ETFs, XRT