Looking at the way the Coronavirus has affected the market, there’s something to be said about how things have gone for Europe in recent weeks. ETF Trends’ CEO Tom Lydon was on-hand with CNBC’s Bob Pisani on this week’s “ETF Edge” to discuss some supposed “pandemic-proof” ETFs, and what they’ve been able to offer.
In particular, the Nordic ETFs, such as the iShares MSCI Denmark ETF (EDEN) and the Global X FTSE Nordic ETF (GFX), have proven to outperform, as they are all up when looking at the YTD performance. As Lydon explains, looking at single-country ETFs, these tend to be areas that have not been handling Coronavirus all that well, like Italy, and the markets aren’t doing well either.
Contrasting that with Northern Europe, such as those Nordic regions, and the results are much different. Looking closer, these ETFs tend to be overweight with sectors such as healthcare, industrials, and materials. That said, while not as diversified as they could be in certain sectors, some of the banks are actually doing quite well.
Similar things can be said about China, which has done a better job of tackling the virus lately. With that in mind, there’s been a lot of encouragement among the local media for investors to buy stock, which has rewarded the Chinese stock market, as a result.
VanEck Associates CEO, Jan Van Eck, was able to chime in on this, given the presence of the VanEck Vectors ChinaAMC SME-ChN ETF (CNXT). As he explains, economically, the central bank has allowed interest rates to rise there, over the last couple of months. This means China is so confident in its economic recovery that they don’t feel like they need to be doing a ton more stimulus.
Watch This ETF Conversation with Tom Lydon and Jan Van Eck:
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