This morning we mention DBEF (Deutsche EAFE Hedged Equity, Expense Ratio 0.35%) leading all ETP’s in terms of inflows lately, pulling in more than $500 million and adding to its asset base which is now north of $13.4 billion.
The fund which debuted in June of 2011 has impressively grown to the third largest fund in the “Developed Markets Equity” space, behind much more tenured and well-known funds EFA (iShares MSCI EAFE, Expense Ratio 0.34%) and VEA (Vanguard Europe Pacific, Expense Ratio 0.09%) which have $60.7 billion and $28.5 billion in AUM respectively.
DBEF, with the $11.6 billion in new assets that it has pulled in via creation activity in 2015, is more than twice the size of the next largest fund in this category in AUM terms, which happens to be IEFA (iShares Core MSCI EAFE, Expense Ratio 0.12%, $6.3 billion in AUM).
DBEF as its name suggests, provides equity exposure to the well-known and heavily benchmarked MSCI EAFE Index, as does a competing ETF from iShares HEFA (iShares Currency Hedged MSCI EAFE, Expense Ratio 0.39%) which is substantially smaller with $2.8 billion in AUM but still growing.
With the U.S. dollar taking a leg up versus global currencies since the middle of June and currently trading near its late May highs, it is not surprising that Currency Hedged Equity products such as DBEF remain in vogue.