When it comes to accessing Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, via exchange traded funds, investors do not face a shortage of choices.
Roughly 140 equity-based ETFs offer exposure to Brazil with most often traveled ETF routes to the country being the iShares MSCI Brazil Capped ETF (NYSEArca: EWZ) or diversified funds such as the Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEArca: VWO) and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEArca: EEM). [Brazil and Dividends With ETFs]
The drawback with those ETFs as means of getting to Brazilian stocks is they are either too hot in the case of EWZ or not hot enough in the cases of EEM and VWO. As a single-country fund, EWZ presents single-country that is not suitable to every investor’s risk tolerance. As diversified plays, VWO and EEM water down Brazil. For example, Brazil is just the fourth-largest country weight in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index at just over 11%. [ETFs for the Adventurous Emerging Markets Investor]
The PowerShares BLDRS Emerging Markets 50 ADR Index Fund (NasdaqGM: ADRE) may just offer investors the right amount of Brazil exposure without the commitment of a country-specific ETF.
ADRE, which has $211.4 million in assets under management, features a 29% weight to Brazil, more than two and a half times that of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. And it is that Brazil exposure that helps explain why ADRE has outperformed rival diversified emerging markets ETFs since those funds bottomed on Feb. 3. [Emerging Markets Beating the S&P 500]
Unlike comparable funds, ADRE is comprised entirely of stocks that trade in the U.S. as the fund is limited to the 50 largest emerging markets American Depositary Receipts (ADRs). There are advantages to that methodology. For example, ADRE features no exposure to Chinese banks or Tencent, the Chinese Internet giant whose shares have recently been sliding. [Tencent Weighs on Social Media ETF]