At the market’s open, Global X will be kicking off the launch of its newest exchange traded fund (ETF), focusing on the 40 largest companies in all five ASEAN regions.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nation regions are Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Global X FTSE ASEAN 40 (NYSEArca: ASEA) will have exposure to five industries in the region: financials, by far the largest weighting at 43.6%; telecommunications, 15.6%; industrials, 15%; consumer discretionary, 10.6%; and consumer staples, 6.6%.
Singapore is the largest country in the fund, with 41.2% of the exposure. Malaysia has a 32.8% weighting, Indonesia comes in at 14.8% and Thailand at 10.6%. Philippines is a scant 0.5%; if you’d like more exposure to the Philippines, you may want to consider iShares MSCI Philippines (NYSEArca: EPHE), which as the name implies is a pure-play on the nation.
The 10-country group makes up one of the world’s fastest-growing regions. The countries in Global X’s fund account for most of the growth, says The Financial Times. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Brunei are the other five not included in the ETF.
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