Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Taiwan ETF purchased

The feeling that I am sitting on too much cash and the sight of markets which are 50% below their recent highs finally proved too much for me and I made a modest investment into a Taiwan ETF (stock code 2837). My purchase price was HK$4.83.

Why Taiwan? The investment was largely based on fundamentals - it is one of the cheapest of the better regulated Asian markets - and the expectation that continued improvements in relations with Beijing will result in tangible economic benefits and improved sentiment/investor confidence.

Incidentally, the range of ETFs listed in Hong Kong has been growing. In addition to ETFs for Hong Kong, PRC, India, Nasdaq, Russia and commodities we now have ETFs for Taiwan and Japan. (There are a few others, but they generally do not have sufficient trading volume even for a small investor like me.) This is good news as it will reduce the need to look to high cost managed funds for equity investments.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sound's interesting - I'm looking at the MSCI Taiwan EFT (EWT) at the moment.

Is that the one you're talking about? Or what's the stock symbol for code 2837?

Management Fees of EWT are relatively high at 0.68% ...