In periods of dollar weakness, investors have enjoyed a return advantage with global ETFs, but that landscape is shifting with some advisors and investors under-allocated to ETFs to hedge currency risk. Fortunately, some have gotten the message.
Since the start of third quarter, the Deutsche X-Trackers MSCI Europe Hedged Equity ETF (NYSEArca: DBEU), which can used in portfolios as currency hedged alternative to VGK, has added nearly $200 million in new assets. DBEU has more than doubled in size just this year. In fact, DBEU doubled in size in a single day earlier in 2014.
The WisdomTree Europe Hedged Equity Fund (NYSEArca: HEDJ) has been another prodigious gather of assets even, serving as further proof that not all Europe ETFs are being abandoned.
Since the start of the third quarter, HEDJ has added nearly $1.2 billion in assets. The ETF has nearly tripled in size since April.
While ETF inflows make for nice anecdotes and conversation pieces, returns are what really matters. DBEU and HEDJ have not been on torrid paces this year, but the pair prove currency hedging in the ETF wrapper works. At the very least, DBEU and HEDJ have been significantly less bad than VGK.
