Emerging Global Advisors is offering an alternative approach to the emerging markets, launching a new exchange traded fund based on an investment index, instead of a traditional benchmark emerging market index.
According to a press release, the EGShares Emerging Markets Core ETF (NYSEArca: EMCR) began trading Tuesday. The ETF tries to reflect the S&P Emerging Markets Core Index, which avoids industry and mature economy concentrations of conventional emerging market benchmarks, like the MSCI Emerging Markets Index and the FTSE Emerging Index. EMCR has a 0.70% expense ratio.
The S&P Emerging Market Core Index is another addition to the growing rules-based, “intelligent” indexing methodology that mimics active management styles. The index focuses on industry groups, does not hold developed economy constituents and follows a modified equal-weight methodology – the fund’s top 10 holdings each make up 1.25% of the overall portfolio.
The ETF’s top country allocations include China 15.0%, South Africa 15.0%, India 15.0%, Brazil 10.0%, Russia 8.8%, Chile 7.5%, Malaysia 7.5% and Mexico 7.5%.
Top sector allocations include consumer staples 17.5%, consumer discretionary 17.4%, finanicals 16.3%, industrials 10.3%, utilities 7.2%, information technology 6.8%, energy 6.8%, health care 6.3%, materials 6.3% and telecom services 5.3%.