We continue to have lots of things to speak about when it comes to China’s equity market and the red hot rally there, and
today we can expand to cover broad “Asia Pacific Equity” ETFs, some of which have benefitted greatly from the move in the
past month or so in the segment.
The largest fund here has picked up an impressive >$1 billion year to date already, and stands now at about $4.25 billion in assets under management, AAXJ (iShares MSCI All Country Asia ex Japan, Expense Ratio 0.69%).
As its name suggests, there is no exposure to Japan’s equity market by design, however the largest singlecountry weighting in this fund is whom else but China (>24.4%).
Rounding out the portfolio includes exposure to South Korea (>16.6%), Taiwan (>15.2%), and Hong Kong (>11.8%) to name some of the larger country weightings in order of size.
The fund has lesser exposure to India, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand and at this point now averages more than 1.2 million shares traded since inception.
AAXJ has overtaken the more tenured VPL (Vanguard FTSE Pacific, Expense Ratio 0.12%) which debuted back in 2005 in terms of asset size over time, as this fund which tracks the FTSE Developed Asia Pacific Index has approximately $3.2 billion in AUM, but a much different underling index make up as Japan is not only included, but is the top single country weighting at 57%.