Along With Obama, New ETF Hits the Gulf Region

Tomorrow, the Van Eck family of ETFs anticipates the launch of the Market Vectors - Gulf States Index ETF (MES) on NYSE Arca. MES seeks to replicate as closely as possible, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the Dow Jones GCC Titans 40 IndexSM ([DJMES]. This equity index measures the performance of 40 companies that are either headquartered in countries belonging to the GCC or generating the majority of their revenues in countries belonging to the GCC. By investing in the Fund, market participants have either direct or indirect exposure to the following GCC markets: Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain.

The index caps the weight of individual stocks at 8% in each country, with a maximum of 15 companies per country [without an additional cap on country weights upon each quarterly rebalance]. As of its inception on July 10, 2008, country allocations include Kuwait (52.3%), United Arab Emirates (25.8%), Qatar (14.9%), Oman (4.4%) and Bahrain (2.6%). The index is broken down among a number of different sectors; the largest include banks (38.5%), financial services (21.6%), real estate (10.5%), technology (7.6%), construction & materials (7.2%), industrial goods & services (7.1%) and telecommunications (3.6%).

Large cap companies account for 37% of the ETF basket with 48% of the exposure from mid-cap companies. There will be 40 companies in the ETF and the top 25 account for 83% of the basket's value.