Colombian stocks have had a dismal run. The Global X FTSE Colombia 20 ETF (NYSEArca: GXG) is off 14.1% in the past year, but the South American country’s sovereign debt got a lift Thursday on news of it possibly seeing a large footprint in some major emerging markets bond indices.
J.P. Morgan said it plans to increase Colombia’s weighting in the GBI-EM Global Diversified Index to 8.05% from 3.24% while the country’s weight in the GBI-EM Global Index could more than triple to 5.6% from 1.81%, Andrea Jaramillo reports for Bloomberg.
The iShares J.P. Morgan USD Emerging Markets Bond ETF (NYSEArca: EMB), the largest emerging markets bond ETF, tracks a J.P. Morgan index, though not one of the aforementioned. Plus, EMB tracks dollar-denominated emerging markets bonds, but Colombia is EMB’s seventh-largest country weigh at 4.7%.
The iShares Emerging Markets Local Currency Bond ETF (NYSEArca: LEMB) allocates over the 4% of its weight to peso-denominated bonds, but the $564.1 million ETF tracks the Barclays Emerging Markets Broad Local Currency Bond Index.
Colombia occupies a 4.5% weight in the Emerging Markets Aggregate Bond ETF (NYSEArca: EMAG) while peso-denominated bonds account for 3.2% of the $822.3 million Market Vectors Emerging Markets Local Currency Bond ETF (NYSEArca: EMLC). The actively managed WisdomTree Emerging Markets Local Debt Fund (NYSEArca: ELD) has an almost 3.6% weight to peso debt.