The biggest Canada country-specific ETF is experiencing heavy outflows as President Donald Trump ramps up his trade rhetoric.
The iShares MSCI Canada ETF (NYSEArca: EWC), the largest U.S.-listed ETF tracking Canadian equities, experienced its biggest outflow in almost four months on Wednesday as investors yanked $48 million out of the ETF, with volume at almost 5.6 million shares, marking the largest daily volume since March and twice the average daily turnover in the past year, Bloomberg reports.
EWC has declined 4.9% year-to-date.
The distaste for Canadian equity exposure suggests American investors are growing more wary of how tariffs may affect Canada, one of the U.S.’s largest trading partners.
Canada ETFs Experience Heightened Trading
Daniel Straus, vice president of ETFs and financial products research at National Bank of Canada, argued that Canada-focused ETFs tend to experience heightened trading interest on the outlook of oil prices, but this trend has lessened in recent weeks.
“What’s happening recently is there’s a new spate of headlines related to trade and trade wars and tariffs and I think that probably a lot of large institutional traders are trying to position their portfolios for what they see as significant headline risk,” Straus told Bloomberg. “For that reason, I think the flows might decouple from performance and from the oil markets in a way that breaks from the patterns we’ve observed in the past.”
The U.S. has placed tariffs on steel and aluminum. Canada has responded with its own tariffs on C$16.6 billion worth of imports from the U.S. on July 1.
The Invesco CurrencyShares Canadian Dollar Trust (NYSE: FXC) has also reflected the depreciation in the Canadian dollar. FXC, which tracks the movements of the loonie against the U.S. dollar, has declined 5.8% year-to-date, with the CAD now trading at around USD $0.7536.
Other Canada ETFs include the First Trust Canada AlphaDEX Fund (NYSEArca: FCAN), Guggenheim Canadian Energy Income Fund (NYSEArca: ENY) and the SPDR MSCI Canada Quality Mix ETF (NYSEArca: QCAN).
For more information on international markets, visit our global ETFs category.