The Bank of Italy recently said this: “In the first four months of the year we saw a more marked decline in loans to households. The tightening of lending conditions to households for house purchase stopped, by reflecting less unfavorable prospects for the real estate market.”
Comments like those highlight the need for caution with an ETF that devotes over a 30% of its weight to the financial services sector, as EWI does. Still, EWI may offer tremendous upside for patient investors as the ETF would need to rise another two and a half times to reach its pre-financial crisis peak.
iShares MSCI Italy ETF
ETF Trends editorial team contributed to this article.