ETF: International Exposure Beyond Europe

The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet's guest contributor program, which is separate from the company's news coverage.

NEW YORK (The FRED Report) -- Our previous article discussed U.S. small and mid-cap issues and how they might very well outperform foreign and emerging markets, and this has sparked some questions about China and the Asian markets -- here at The FRED Report, we covered these on our weekly conference call (video recap here).

First, for those who simply MUST invest in China, we rank the Chinese ETFs as follows: EWH, FXI, and HAO. The reasons for this ranking are: (1) the relative positions of the recent low to the last low, and (2) the amount each one has fallen from the recent highs. We note that FXI is a good indication of the strength of Chinese export oriented companies, while HAO is a better indication of the performance of the Chinese domestic economy. HAO has been stronger; now it is weaker, and one of the tricks to trading China is to know when to switch from "defense" to "offense", i.e. switching from FXI to HAO. Right now, the market action in HAO is confirming a slowing Chinese economy, but that will eventually change. We show weekly charts below - EWH is our favorite choice.

For those who want international exposure, we have talked about other Asian ETFs - these seem like a better bet to us. Our favorites are EWS and EWM. Both of these have outperformed China, and also Japan (EWJ). Note that Stochastics on all of these have gotten oversold. We show charts below:

Another interesting idea is IDX. Stochastics are in a buy mode and the chart pattern is still basically up and attractive.

 

What these charts show is that there are plenty of international opportunities outside of Europe, which is where everyone is focusing.  Please look at our previous article as well, as we still prefer US small and mid-cap indexes for speculative money -- but if you must have some international exposure these look attractive.

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