iShares Asia Region ETFs Fall Across the Board

iShares Asia region country-based ETFs traded lower last week for the first time in six weeks. Declines were across the board and exacerbated by heavy selling on the 20th anniversary of Black Friday.

iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 (FXI) was the only fund among those surveyed to trade meaningfully higher during the week, but faced heavy selling pressure Friday and ended the week down 1.8% (+78.8% year-to-date return). FXI shed roughly 20 points or about 10% from its intra-day all-time high set Wednesday.

iPath ETN India (INP) was the biggest decliner last week, -8.6% (+40.2% ytd), as Indian stocks fell sharply on profit-taking after a recent surge to all-time highs with the BSE 30 closing above 19,000 for the first time last Monday.

The following funds were previously up more than 40%: S. Korea (EWY) fell 6.4% (+36.5% ytd), Australia (EWA) -4.9% (+35.4% ytd), Singapore (EWS) -6.8% (+32.3% ytd) and Pacific ex-Japan (EPP) -5.0% (+33% ytd).

Hong Kong (EWH) -4.2% (+32.7%) and Malaysia (EWM) -3.1% (+32.2%) saw their ytd returns drop towards the lower 30% level.

Japan's (EWJ) 4.3% decline pushed the most heavily traded country ETF back into the red for the year (-2.3%).

See the chart below for last week's results. There are two sets of returns for each ETF: the past week [light blue] and year-to-date [purple].

Note, the bars for the iShares S&P 500 index (IVV) are colored differently for comparative purposes.

Click to enlarge chart

Disclosure: The author does not own shares of any funds mentioned in this article.

In Monday (10/22) trading, India's BSE 30 was the only benchmark to close positive, +0.3% to 17,613.99, having rallied late after being down double digits and following heavy selling all last week. The Hang Seng lost 3.7% to 28,373.63, the biggest decliner except for a 4.3% loss in Jakarta. The Shanghai Composite fell 2.6% to 5,667.33, while the Nikkei declined 2.4% to 16,438.47. Among other benchmarks, the Seoul Composite lost 3.4%, Singapore's Straits Times -2.8%, Australia's All Ordinaries -1.95% and Malaysia's KLSE Composite -1.4%.

Here is a list of the relevant ETFs and their tickers.

iShares Australia (EWA)
iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 (FXI)
iShares Hong Kong (EWH)
iPath ETN MSCI India (INP)
iShares Japan (EWJ)
iShares Malaysia (EWM)
iShares Singapore (EWS)
iShares S. Korea (EWY)
iShares Taiwan (EWT)
iShares EAFE (EFA)
iShares Pacific ex-Japan (EPP)
iShares S&P 500 (IVV)