Last month, 29 of the 30 U.S. banks subjected to the Federal Reserve’s stress test passed. Shareholders of the iShares MSCI Europe Financials ETF (NasdaqGM: EUFN) are hoping that fund’s holdings ace similar stress tests by European regulators.
European banks, including some that comprise EUFN’s 103-member lineup, “will be ranked on how well they can withstand a 21.2 percent slump in home values, coupled with a surge in unemployment and plummeting economic growth, as part of the bleakest scenario in the most severe EU stress test to date,” according to Bloomberg.
Stress tests for European banks come as EUFN is showing strength against some of its U.S.-focused counterparts. For example, the $498.8 million EUFN is up nearly 3% over the past month while the Financial Select Sector SPDR (NYSEArca: XLF) is down 1%. [Make a Deposit With European Banks]
The European Central Bank is expected to conduct stress tests on 124 banks in the European Union, but the Bank of England will conduct its own tests on British banks, Bloomberg reported.
The U.K. is by far EUFN’s largest country weight at 30.1%, nearly two and a half times the allocation given to France and nearly triple the weight the ETF has to Germany.