Last week an ETF that is designed to provide exposure to the equity market of Hong Kong reeled in significant asset flows, to the tune of about $400 million — at the time equivalent to about 20% of the outstanding assets in the fund.
The iShares MSCI Hong Kong (NYSEArca: EWH) has been around since 1996, making it a veteran of some sort in the ETF world, and the fund tracks the MSCI Hong Kong Index.
Currently, top holdings are mostly concentrated in the Real Estate sector (33.43%) and Financial Services (25.84%) and top single component weightings include AIA Group Ltd. (11.77%), Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd. (7.08%), and Cheung Kong Holdings Ltd. (6.40%).
EWH, being the absolute giant in the “Hong Kong equity” category pertaining to existing ETFs, iShares also offers the lesser known iShares MSCI Hong Kong Small Cap (NYSEArca: EWHS) which actually only debuted in January of 2012, while First Trust Hong Kong AlphaDEX (NYSEArca: FHK) is also a potential alternative.
However, EWHS and FHK only hold approximately $4.4 million in assets collectively across the two of them while EWH currently has well north of $2.4 billion in AUM. Hong Kong is often compared to China due to its proximity to mainland China, and that said, the performance of Hong Kong’s equity market in 2012 has certainly been encouraging given China’s woes.