Five top foreign iShares ETF buys

Article Excerpt

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have gained popularity in recent years, mainly because many ETFs offer very low management fees. In addition to low fees, the best ETFs offer well-diversified, highly tax-efficient portfolios. However, quality varies. The investment industry has created all sorts of ETFs. All too many exist to tap into popular, but risky, themes and fads, so you need to be highly selective with your ETF holdings. Here are five foreign ETFs we like: ISHARES MSCI JAPAN INDEX FUND $10.60 (American Exchange symbol EWJ; buy or sell through a broker) is an exchange-traded mutual fund that tries to match the return of the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Japan index. The fund’s top holdings include: Toyota Motor, 5.0%; Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, 2.9%; Honda Motor, 2.6%; Canon, 2.0%; Sumitomo Mitsui Financial, 1.9%; Takeda Pharmaceutical, 1.6%; Tokyo Electric Power, 1.6%; Sony Corp., 1.6%; Mitsubishi Corporation, 1.5%; and Nintendo Co., 1.4%. The fund’s industry breakdown is as follows: Consumer Discretionary, 19.7%; Industrials, 19.1%; Financials, 17.0%; Information Technology,…