Outstanding International ETFs: Austria, South Africa and Korea

BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries have received most of the investment press recently, but examination of the performance record of all of the iShares country ETF's shows some outstanding countries outside of BRIC.

Only three countries (China not included) generated higher returns than the Dow Jones Total U.S. market in EACH of the last 5 calendar years (2002-2006) AND did not have a negative return in any of those years:

Austria (EWO)
South Africa (EZA)
Korea (EWY)

Each of those countries is off to a loss for January 2007. If we soften our criteria and allow up to a 5% loss in the difficult year of 2002 (where the U.S. market declined 22.1%), one additional country joined the list: Australia (EWA) down 1.3% in 2002 and marginally up in January 2007. Malaysia (EWM) was a respectable runner-up, down only 0.7 % in 2002, but not exceeding the U.S. market in 2003 or 2005, yet up 9.4% in January 2007.

When the crowd is mostly focused on a particular country, some other country may in fact offer better opportunities.  It's at least worth consideration.

EWO vs. EZA vs. EWY 5-yr chart:

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