JPMorgan BetaBuilders Japan ETF (BATS: BBJP) has wowed the ETF community, reaching almost $1.4 billion assets under management since debuting just over a month ago on June 15.
As of close of trading on Tuesday, it had $1,382,524,000 AUM, according to BarChart.com.
BBJP becomes the second quickest ETF to reach the $1 billion mark in assets after SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEArca: GLD) accomplished the feat in a record three days.
One point of comparison with respect to other similar funds is BBJP’s low expense ratio of 0.19%. When juxtaposed with a similar ETF, such as the iShares MSCI Japan ETF (NYSEArca: EWJ), its expense ratio is 30 basis points higher with an expense fee of 0.49%.
Related: U.S., Japan Yields Spike on Tighter Monetary Policy Reports
As far as the ETF itself, BBJP seeks investment results that correlate to the performance of the Morningstar® Japan Target Market Exposure IndexSM–a free float adjusted market capitalization weighted index which consists of stocks traded primarily on the Tokyo Stock Exchange or the Nagoya Stock Exchange. The top five holdings of BBJP includes Toyota Motor Corp, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc, Sony Corp, SoftBank Group Corp and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc.
It will be interesting to see how BBJP responds to the macroeconomic factors going on in Japan as the Bank of Japan is currently scaling back on a massive monetary stimulus package. BBJP could stand to benefit as the BOJ decides on how to move forward with their monetary policy with respect to a forthcoming interest rate decision this month.
At this point, a definitive decision is still in limbo.
“Compared to when the BOJ decided to do a comprehensive policy review in July 2016, you cannot avoid the impression that there is no clear conclusion yet in the BOJ on what it wants to do,” said Chotaro Morita, chief rates strategist at SMBC Nikko Securities.
BBJP is up 1.6% since its introduction and gained 0.49% at the close of today’s trading session.
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