For many years, ishares’s single country ETFs have dominated the ETF market for investing in one specific country. These ETFs tracked the main market index of the corresponding countries. They have been a huge success with funds such
as EWG and EWA collecting assets of over $1.0B since launch.

Due to the success of the ishare’s single country ETFs and the rising investor demand for foreign markets exposure, Northern Trust has recently launched a bunch of country based ETFs that will track the market index of the corresponding countries.Northern Trust hopes that it can become a serious competitor to the dominance of ishares in this area.

The new ETFs from Northern Trust are:

NETS(TM) Hang Seng Index Fund (Hong Kong) – HKG
NETS(TM) TOPIX® Index Fund (Japan) – TYI
NETS(TM) CAC40® Index Fund (France) – FRC
NETS(TM) FTSE 100 Index Fund (UK) – LDN
NETS(TM) DAX® Index Fund (Germany) – DAX
NETS(TM) S&P/ASX 200 Index Fund (Australia) – AUS

Analysis:
Since their launch in mid April this year, they ETFs have been doing ok.Volume is still pretty low in the thousands or a few hundered shares on a daily basis. Hopefully the volume will pick up as more investors discover the benefits of going foreign with these
simple and easy index based ETFs.

For now, its best to watch these ETFs over the next few months and see how they perform before investing in them.We would n’t be surprised if AUS and DAX end up with more assets and stock price appreciation by the end of the year than the other four.

Links:
1. ishares