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Designed to provide broad exposure to the Financials - Broad segment of the equity market, the iShares MSCI Europe Financials ETF (EUFN) is a passively managed exchange traded fund launched on 01/20/2010.
While an excellent vehicle for long term investors, passively managed ETFs are a popular choice among institutional and retail investors due to their low costs, transparency, flexibility, and tax efficiency.
Investor-friendly, sector ETFs provide many options to gain low risk and diversified exposure to a broad group of companies in particular sectors. Financials - Broad is one of the 16 broad Zacks sectors within the Zacks Industry classification. It is currently ranked 5, placing it in top 31%.
Index Details
The fund is sponsored by Blackrock. It has amassed assets over $1.30 billion, making it one of the average sized ETFs attempting to match the performance of the Financials - Broad segment of the equity market. EUFN seeks to match the performance of the MSCI Europe Financials Index before fees and expenses.
The MSCI Europe Financials Index is a free float-adjusted market capitalization weighted index designed to measure the combined equity market performance of the financials sector of developed market countries in Europe.
Costs
Investors should also pay attention to an ETF's expense ratio. Lower cost products will produce better results than those with a higher cost, assuming all other metrics remain the same.
Annual operating expenses for this ETF are 0.48%, making it on par with most peer products in the space.
It has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 4.96%.
Sector Exposure and Top Holdings
Even though ETFs offer diversified exposure that minimizes single stock risk, investors should also look at the actual holdings inside the fund. Luckily, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.
Looking at individual holdings, Hsbc Holdings Plc (HSBA) accounts for about 8.42% of total assets, followed by Allianz (ALV) and Bnp Paribas Sa (BNP).
The top 10 holdings account for about 40.87% of total assets under management.
Performance and Risk
So far this year, EUFN has lost about -17.14%, and is down about -13.75% in the last one year (as of 05/09/2022). During this past 52-week period, the fund has traded between $15.86 and $21.84.
The ETF has a beta of 1.17 and standard deviation of 31.11% for the trailing three-year period, making it a medium risk choice in the space. With about 88 holdings, it effectively diversifies company-specific risk.
Alternatives
IShares MSCI Europe Financials ETF carries a Zacks ETF Rank of 3 (Hold), which is based on expected asset class return, expense ratio, and momentum, among other factors. Thus, EUFN is a good option for those seeking exposure to the Financials ETFs area of the market. Investors might also want to consider some other ETF options in the space.