Pakistan was demoted to frontier status in 2009 after its equity market was closed to sellers for over 100 days during the 2008 global financial crisis, according to news reports. However, Pakistan’s benchmark Karachi Stock Exchange 100 Index has since been one of the best-performing equity benchmarks in the world.
Related: Pakistan ETF Surges on EM Promotion
Prior to the debut of PAK, the iShares MSCI Frontier 100 ETF (NYSEArca: FM) was the ETF with the largest Pakistan exposure. Pakistan is currently FM’s third-largest country weight behind Kuwait and Argentina.
“Despite the low presence in the EM world (vs 8.9% in MSCI FM), we expect the market to attract a lot more attention from EM dedicated funds (estimated net inflows of about $400 million) given the huge chunk of assets under management benchmarked to MSCI EM stood at $1.5 trillion (as of December 2015) versus about $15 billion for frontier markets,” according to part of a Credit Suisse note posted by Barron’s.
For more information on Pakistan, visit our Pakistan category.
Global X MSCI Pakistan ETF
