It’s a nice change of pace to be able to speak about options flows with a bullish bias for once in the Emerging Markets space, as we have seen some evidence of upside call buying in products such as FXI (iShares China Large Cap, Expense Ratio 0.73%), EWZ (iShares MSCI Brazil, Expense Ratio 0.60%), and even the out of favor EEM (iShares MSCI Emerging Markets, Expense Ratio 0.67%), which has lost more than $8 billion year to date in terms of redemption flows.
While China,Brazil, and broad EM proxies like EEM have struggled year to date, there are some segments of the Emerging Markets/Frontier Markets space that have absolutely shined thus far in 2014.
Today we will cover EIDO (iShares MSCI Indonesia Investable Market Index, Expense Ratio 0.59%) which is up greater than 23% just year to date, and has seen several heavier sessions of trading volume in the past few days as it flirts with its highest levels since last September.
The fund debuted in May of 2010, so it will be celebrating its fourth birthday shortly, and remains the largest ETF in the U.S. marketplace that provides exposure to the Indonesian equity market with about $443 million in assets under management. IDX (Market Vectors Indonesia Index, Expense Ratio debuted more than a year earlier than EIDO, but it seems to have lost market share to the newer product over time.
Little known IDXJ (Market Vectors Indonesia Small Cap, Expense Ratio 0.61%) which has about $6.7 million in assets under management and trades about 16,000 shares daily is another alternative in this space for those looking for exposure to small cap stocks.
Back to EIDO, and a quick look at what might be powering this year to date performance.