The final frontier

Paul Burgin investigates specialist ETFs focusing on the frontier markets.

The closure of the Egyptian stock exchange at the end of January highlights one of the many perils facing frontier market investors. Liquidity, access, political and social risk are just some of the factors that must be taken into account. Not surprisingly, investors are far less keen on frontiers than the more tried and tested emerging markets and are also hampered by a lack of ETF product choice. Last year investors switched their equity focus away from developed markets in a bid to unearth outperformance in emerging economies. Global net new assets in emerging market equity ETFs hi...