Buoyed by rampant monetary easing and compelling valuations, U.S. money managers have been funneling more assets into overseas markets. That movement includes Europe exchange traded funds and in significant fashion.
The first quarter still has one month left, but to this point, investors have allocated $19.3 billion to Europe ETFs, Giles Turner reports for the Wall Street Journal, citing Markit data.
Year-to-date, no ETF has added more assets than the $5.3 billion added by the WisdomTree Europe Hedged Equity Fund (NYSEArca: HEDJ). Just 11 months ago, HEDJ celebrated its entry into the $1 billion in assets under management. Today, the ETF has over $12 billion and its ascent to the status of largest ETF, a crown it will take from the Vanguard FTSE Europe ETF (NYSEArca: VGK), can be measured in days, if not minutes or hours. [This ETF is About to Claim a big Honor]
HEDJ has added about $2.1 billion more in new assets this year than the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (NYSEArca: HYG), the next best asset gathering ETF.
Although it is not a dedicated Europe ETF, the Deutsche X-trackers MSCI EAFE Hedged Equity ETF (NYSEArca: DBEF), features European nations among eight of its top 10 country weights. Those eight countries, including non-Eurozone members the U.K. and Switzerland, combine for over 46% of the ETF’s weight. [Another Currency Hedged ETF Swells in Size]
DBEF’s constituents can hail from 21 countries, including the following: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Given its current asset-gathering pace, DBEF will double in size this year, marking the second consecutive year the ETF has done so. To be more precise, DBEF has more than tripled in size since mid-December. In mid-October, DBEF had just over $800 million in assets under management. Only three ETFs have added more new assets than DBEF this year. [ETFs That Have Doubled in Size]