Many emerging economies are shifting away from an export oriented growth model and moving toward sustainable domestic growth instead. Investors can gain exposure to this new trend through WisdomTree’s new emerging market consumer growth exchange traded fund.
According to a press release, the WisdomTree Emerging Markets Consumer Growth Fund (Nasdaq GIDS: EMCG) started trading Friday, September 27.
EMCG tries to reflect the performance of theWisdomTree Emerging Markets Consumer Growth Index, which is a fundamentally weighted index that selects components based on growth, quality and valuation factors. The ETF has a 0.63% expense ratio.
“One of the major themes we believe will drive much of the global economy over the coming years is the potential growth from the emerging market consumers,” Jeremy Schwartz, WisdomTree Director of Research, said in the press release. “Despite short-term noise in the markets this year, the strong underlying fundamentals of emerging markets are demographic in nature (larger and younger populations compared to the developed world) and have not deteriorated, nor do they shift much year-to-year.”
The emerging market’s growing population has the potential for increasing income over time, with many countries showing a growing middle class.
“In fact, the emerging market middle-class is projected to grow from 1 billion people in 2009 to approximately 4 billion people by 2030,” according to a WisdomTree note. “At the same time, their spending is projected to grow from 35% of global middle-class spending to 70%.”
EMCG’s top holdings include iPath MSCI India Index ETN 3.6%, Ping An Insurance Group Co 3.5%, Cia de Bebidas das Americas 3.5%, America Movil SAB 3.2% and Astra International Tbk 3.2%.
“We have designed EMCB to provide exposure to broad cross sections of the markets, beyond one or two sectors, in companies we believe are positioned to benefit from the growth of emerging market consumption,” Schwartz added.
Sector allocations include consumer discretionary 26.9%, consumer staples 26.6%, financials 17.9%, telecom services 11.1%, industrials 4.1%, utilities 4.1%, other 3.6% and health care 1.3%. [Emerging Market ETFs for Dividends, Consumer Sector]
Country allocations include China 18.1%, Brazil 15.6%, South Africa 12.6%, Mexico 10.1%, Indonesia 8.0%, Turkey 6.9%, South Korea 5.2%, Malaysia 4.7%, Thailand 3.6%, India 3.6%, Taiwan 2.1%, Philippines 2.0%, Russia 1.9%, Chile 0.6% and Poland 0.4%. [This ETF Offers Compensation for Emerging Markets Risk]
For more information on fund products, visit our new ETFs category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.