Keep holding China’s best

Article Excerpt

ISHARES CHINA LARGE-CAP ETF, $40.88, is a hold for safety-conscious investors. The ETF (New York symbol FXI; buy or sell through brokers) tracks the 50 largest, most-liquid Chinese stocks. It started up October 4, 2004, and investors are charged a high 0.74% MER. The units give you a 2.1% yield. Top holdings for the $4.4 billion fund are China Construction Bank, 9.1%; Tencent (Inter-net), 8.7%; Ping An Insurance, 7.8%; Industrial & Commercial Bank, 6.7%; Meituan Dianping (group buying/food delivery), 6.5%; China Mobile, 4.8%; Bank of China, 4.4%; CNOOC (oil), 3.7%; and China Life Insurance, 3.2%. China still offers strong growth potential for investors. But to ensure longer-term stability, it needs to implement and maintain policies to cut high levels of consumer and business borrowing. That’s proving difficult given the ongoing trade war with the U.S. To offset slowing growth due to the tariffs, the government is again encouraging banks to lend money. However, China continues to tighten environmental regulations. Those measures could slow its near-term growth. growth…