South Korea’s Booming Economy Offers Great Investment Opportunity
Did you know that last week South Korea’s stock market hit a new all-time high and is up 40.4% year to date?
South Korea is in one of its best growth periods with its economy showing great strength and prosperity. Consistency is the key and throughout the rest of the year a well balanced country is estimated to continue to move forward.
As a result, a great investment opportunity lies in the iShares MSCI South Korea Index, the ETF trading under symbol EWY.
South Korea’s Economy
Things are looking good for the country, take a look at the following facts:
- South Korea’s consumer price index (released last week) rose 2.3% year over year in September after rising 2% in July.
- Unemployment dropped to 3.2% from 3.4% in July.
- GDP jumped 4.9% year over year in the second quarter. The first quarter was up a staggering 3.9%.
- The Bank of Korea’s quarterly survey of consumer confidence for September hit its highest level in five years.
All very positive and forward looking for South Korea.
Invest in South Korea, Buy the ETF
97.5% of the stocks owned within the IShares MSCI South Korea Index (symbol EWY) are listed on the country’s exchange.
Samsung Electronics makes up 14.26% of the ETF’s portfolio and is the top holding. POPSCO is second highest making up 9.42% of the portfolio and last week it broke to new al-time price highs. Kookmin Bank, Shinhan Financial Group, and Hyundai Heavy Industries round out the rest of the top 5 portfolio holdings.
The fund has a market capitilization of $2.4 Billion as of this post today, and I expect this could very well grow as the fund likely moves higher over the coming months.
The ETF last week broke out of a nice base and has seen some good accumulation recently from institutions (View the chart).
Last note about EWY is that it was on my list of the Top 25 ETFs posted last week.
Many people consider the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and we tend to forget about those other countries. Thx for bringing this up! I’ll check the EFT for sure!
The chart does look great.
Nice find
South Korea is huge, and their economy is poised to grow. They are already in the first then economies in the world. And they are improving each year, just take a look at their car industry. I drive Kia cee’d and it is an excellent car. IN my opinion almost as good as Golf. Just a few years ago Kia had nothing but average cars, not to mention the growth of Samsung, Hyundai, etc.