We often look for unusual trading volume or trends that are potentially developing in exchange traded funds that tend to fly under the radar due to lower assets under management levels, or infrequency of activity within these funds. One extreme example occurred on Wednesday of this week in little known EUSA (iShares MSCI USA Index).
This ETF typically trades around 8,400 shares on a daily basis, and had a paltry $2.5 million in assets under management before Wednesday’s trading activity, having debuted in May of 2010. EUSA tracks the MSCI USA Index, which is a market capitalization weighted methodology that measures the performance of equities listed on U.S. stock exchanges that are in the top 85% ranked by market capitalization.
Thus, EUSA fits in the “all cap” category, and some common peers would include IWV (iShares Russell 3000), SCHB (Schwab U.S. Broad Market Index), VTI (Vanguard Total Stock Market) and IYY (iShares D.J. U.S. Index) to name a few.
Being market cap weighted, it is no surprise that the largest holdings in EUSA are large cap names including the top five weightings, XOM, AAPL, IBM, CVX, and MSFT. Collectively, these top five names compose about 12% of the overall portfolio.
In all, the index holds 588 equity names, and EUSA is a classic example of a thinly traded ETF that has a great deal of underlying liquidity present, and thus it can be traded efficiently, and in great size, irrespective of the average daily volume totals in the ETF.