As is always the case the fund is very heavy in emerging markets. The largest holdings appear to be iShares Brazil (EWZ) by a wide margin followed by iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 (FXI) with those two adding up to almost one third of the portfolio. Much of the portfolio is a who's who of emerging market ETFs but there are also plenty of individual stocks in the portfolio but those positions seem to be much smaller with largest stock holding appearing to be a REIT called Pebblebrook Hotel Trust (PEB). The market cap is $809 million and HMC's position is worth $46 million. The yield is low and it has underperformed the S&P 500 by a wide margin in the last year (it's time on the market).
On another note Market Vectors has filed for an Andean fund that will focus on small and mid cap stocks. The countries will be Chile, Peru and Colombia. The mention in the filing, and the IU article of small and mid cap might be because the large companies in these markets are mid caps by US standards but that was not clear from my skimming of filing.
There was also a mention in the filing, as there always is, warning of industry concentration which is only a problem when fund holders don't realize the industry or sector concentration of what they own. The way I prefer to do things the more concentrated the better. As an example, the Global X Colombia Fund (GXG) has huge weightings in financials and energy which makes the fund easier to integrate into a portfolio where sector weightings are a concern.Last night we watched Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. To paraphrase Ron Burgundy, a few minutes after we bought it I immediately regretted my decision. It was truly awful.
11 comments:
To clarify, when I say bought the movie I mean on pay per view.
Well you shoulda watched more than the opening credits, then ;-)
"Eeeeeh-Aqualung!"
The Chile-Colombia-Peru ETF is splendid. Did you know that these three countries recently pooled their stock exchanges, so all three are open to each other's investors? Smart move to improve liquidity. As you know, each of these countries is small and sector-concentrated, but pooled together they make a much better-looking market. Sign me up for this new ETF.
actually i did not know that, thank you for the information
Chile-Colombia-Peru seems to be a hot idea -- e.g., both Van Eck and ING are planning funds for the "Andean" sector now -- but there is some reason behind the idea: Not only are the stock markets of the three linked but trade and developmental planning between the three countries is gaining explicit policy support (e.g., http://tinyurl.com/38hg4vs ) w/ Mexico and Panama becoming interested parties; e.g., http://tinyurl.com/38hg4vs
Cooperative regional blocks have some real potential and I expect to see more of them; the logic is compelling particularly if you don't want to be pushed around by the big players or be disadvantaged by their currency policies.
Hey Roger--Your post is featured today at Barrons.com in the Focus on Funds blog! Very nice.
whhhaaatt? someone has made a terrible mistake.
Single-stock ETFs on the way?
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/12/and-in-etf-news/
Scheduled to start April 1, no doubt.
BillM
i'll be mentioning that in tomorrow's post...99% of the stock without the dividend. classic
1/3 of the endowment in 2 emerging market countries.
Man these people are either idiotic or they've got a lot more nads than me.
Stephen--I think this is only the portion of the portfolio that Harvard manages in-house, as Roger points out, not the entire endowment.
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