EWH (iShares MSCI Hong Kong, Expense Ratio 0.52%) has seen exceptional volatility and selling pressure the past few sessions, directly related to the recent influx of volume and bearish looking trading in China and East Asian equity markets.
After trading as high as $19.54 just six trading sessions ago, EWH briefly fell as low as $17.81 on an intraday basis yesterday, only to gap up more than 1.5% this morning.
Trading volume and interest seems to be building in the name as well, as it seems rather safe to say that the Emerging Markets led by China, will likely replace “Europe” as one of this summer’s daily topics of interest.
Year to date, EWH has seen north of $700 million leave the fund via redemption flows, and this morning we note in our options recap that the September 19 calls received heavy play yesterday (more than 100,000 contracts traded versus open interest of 213 contracts).
EWH is the largest Hong Kong focused ETF in the landscape, and radio listeners were listening to “One Sweet Day” by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men (unfortunately for them) when this ETF launched way back in March of 1996.
Despite the net outflows year to date, the fund still has $2.2 billion under management. Top holdings in the fund are AIA Group Ltd. (14.43%), Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. (6.41%), and Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd. (6.11%), and it is heavily slanted towards Real Estate (33.88%) and Financials (27.35%) in terms of portfolio composition. [Trouble Ahead for Hong Long ETFs]