The vanguard emerging market index fund (Symbol: VEIEX) invests in the 18 "emerging market" countries as of today. This fund allocates the money among the countries in "proportion to their weighing in the index".
There has been a lot of noise about the two emerging markets lately: India and China. The current weighing of these two countries in the index is 8.3% for China and 6.2% for India. I was little surprised to see such a low numbers. In comparison, the Korean basket right now accounts for 19.4% of the emerging market fund. Korea is followed by Taiwan at 15.4%, South Africa at 12.6%, and Brazil at 10.5% in the emerging market fund.
It is true that, eventually, China and India will have top two spots in the index. But, looking at the current makeup of the index, it is safe to say that that "eventual" time may be a long time away.
2 comments:
I think that the weight given to India and China is acceptable, considering that these markets are not really developed, there are a lot of structural issues in these markets. As compared to Taiwan and Korea which are much more developed in terms of the Capital markets China and India still leave a lot to be desired in terms of stuff like short sales, margin trading, liquidity, restrictions on forex etc. Just last month when the Indian market went down a bit after the foreign institutions pulled back a little -there was immediate talk of imposing a tax on these transactions. All this justifiaby makes the Western investor jittery so a 7-9% weightage is justified in my humble opinion. Meanwhile congratulations on a great blog.
AK - and a little bit of self promotion
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