iShares Launching 5 New International ETFs Including Israel, Thailand and Turkey

We are pleased to hear that the Barclays family of iShares exchange-traded funds announced the impending launch of five new ETFs expected to trade on or around March 28, 2008. The five new ETFs are:

iShares MSCI ACWI (All Country World Index) Index Fund (ACWI)
iShares MSCI ACWI ex US Index Fund (ACWX)
iShares MSCI Israel Capped Investable Market Index Fund (EIS)
iShares MSCI Thailand Investable Market Index Fund (THD)
iShares MSCI Turkey Investable Market Index Fund (TUR)

The All Country ETFs will be a valuable alternative to the global ETFs on the market and Chartwell has long waited for the Israel, Turkey and Thailand ETFs which will become part of the universe of its innovative Chartwell Country Rotation ETFfolio.

I will need to take a closer look and see if the Thailand and Turkey ETFs have a better distribution than the closed-ended funds that I have been using as proxies for these two interesting markets which have been buffeted by political storms.

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Comments

[User 169439:]

The products officially launched today: www.marketwire.com/mw/...

2008 Mar 28 09:49 AM

[Roger Nusbaum:]

the Thailand fund is actually THD not HD

2008 Mar 28 02:29 PM

[drbagel:]

I have to wonder how much interest there will be in ACWX. State Street's CWI and Vanguard's VEU are already out there in the all world except US class. Of the two, Vanguard is cheaper at 25 basis points. CWI tracks the same index as ACWX and charges the same 35 basis points. I guess Barclays just wants to have a complete lineup. I suppose it offers a tax harvesting opportunity.

2008 Mar 29 01:46 PM