New Financial ETF Sinks or Swims With China

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- EG Shares' newest exchange traded fund, the EG Shares Dow Jones Emerging Markets Financials Titans Index Fund(EFN Quote), focuses primarily on so-called BRIC countries, where rising middle classes are enriching banks and insurers.

China carries the largest weighting, at 42%, followed by Brazil, with 22%, and South Africa and India, at 9% each. Similar to the company's other funds, the newest ETF concentrates holdings in a few stocks. The biggest positions are Industrial & Commercial Bank of China(IDCBY Quote) and Brazil's Itau Unibanco(ITUB Quote), each at 9.1%, and China Life Insurance(LFC Quote), with 8.5%.

The Dow Jones Titan indexes are market-cap weighted. Itau Unibanco has a market value of $84 billion, and China Life comes in at $49 billion. Those are smaller than mega banks in the U.S. and Europe. Still, the indexes will be BRIC-heavy for a long time as large banks in other countries are much smaller than, say, many Chinese financials. It just so happens with the financial fund that the banks from Russia don't make it on to the list of largest publicly traded financial stocks, but most of the other EG Shares ETFs will have quite a bit of exposure to Russia.

The biggest risk with the fund is its heavy exposure to China. In the past few months, there has been a lot of attention paid to the amount of loan growth in China. In November, limits on lending were lifted to support China's stimulus package, and the pace of new loans skyrocketed as a result, sparking concern of a financial bubble in China. (Sound familiar?) Central bank officials have said publicly that loan growth will stabilize. So is the problem solved? Well, that's the question -- as well as the biggest challenge for fund holders beyond the normal increase in volatility that goes with investing in emerging markets.