We speak about continued distress across the Emerging Markets space, most recently with the second largest fund in the segment EEM (iShares MSCI Emerging Markets, Expense Ratio 0.67%) trading with a $38 handle for the first time since the spring along with action in the December 38 puts there.
Not the largest single country holding within EEM but one of the top ten weightings, Mexico (approximately 5.05% of the underlying MSCI EM Index) has been basically punished lately, down nearly twice as much as EEM itself in the trailing one month period.
We watch EWW (iShares MSCI Mexico Investable Market, Expense Ratio 0.48%) closely in this segment, as the fund has been around since 1996 and it has more than $2.2 billion in assets under management. If EWW closes down once again today (currently it is up small), that would mark fifteen consecutive down days in the fund, and trading volume has been basically double the average levels in the fund for the entire month of December thus far.
EWW is trading at its lowest levels since the summer of 2013 currently. From a sector standpoint the fund has its heaviest slant to Consumer Staples (>22%), followed by exposures to Basic Materials (>19%), Financials (>17%), and Telecom (>17%) and top individual stock holdings are America Movil SAB de CV Class L (17.44%), Grupo Televisa SAB Ord. (7.76%), and Fomento Economico Mexicano SAB de CV (>7.75%).
EWW is the only fund with a real presence in the Mexico Equity space, as the second largest fund here is DBMX (Deutsche MSCI Mexico Hedged Equity, Expense Ratio 0.50%) with only $4.8 million in AUM, as well
as QMEX (SPDR MSCI Mexico Quality Mix, Expense Ratio 0.40%) which debuted just three months ago and remains small with $2.4 million in AUM.