What a difference a few years makes in terms of the once much maligned PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain)), which, if we look at related ETFs, they are among the top performers year to date in all of
the European equity ETF space.
The relevant ETFs here are PGAL (Global X FTSE Portugal 20, Expense Ratio 0.61%), EWI (iShares MSCI Italy, Expense Ratio 0.51%), EIRL (iShares MSCI Capped Investable Market, Expense Ratio 0.52%), GREK (Global X FTSE Greece 20, Expense Ratio 0.69%), and EWP (iShares MSCI Spain, Expense Ratio 0.52%).
PGAL remains somewhat small, with about $20.8 million in assets under management, while EIRL has $179 million, EWI an impressive $1.29 billion, GREK $255 million, and EWP about $1.66 billion. EWP and EWI are seasoned veterans of the ETF space, with both of these funds having debuted way back in 1996.
EIRL (2010 inception), GREK (2011 inception), and PGAL (2013 inception) are obviously quite newer and have received a decent level of institutional and retail interest and activity since their respective debuts.
In U.S. markets, we have seen a rather steep and swift intraday move today on this first Friday in April, primarily driven by aggressive sellers in higher beta segments of the market (once again), like Social Media (SOCL) and Small-Caps (IWM) for example.