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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: abuelita who wrote (20803)	8/5/2007 1:28:09 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 217615

I did it by getting into an ETF, EWJ, which follows the MSCI Japan Index. Sold at AMEX, and OK for retirement accounts. It has done well recently. quicktake.morningstar.com The MSCI Japan Index is a Morgan Stanley product tracking 85% of the Japanese stock market. I like it b/c of the currency situation and b/c I think Japan is on the rebound. This Fool did a fairly good job of describing its advantages, a part of which I quote below: fool.com The MSCI Japan Index -- on which the fund is based -- is capitalization-weighted and seeks to track 85% of the capitalization of the entire Japanese stock market. That makes this ETF a good proxy for Japanese stocks generally. The fund holds a representative sampling of roughly 350 stocks in the index and offers broad exposure to all major sectors. Holdings Toyota Motor (NYSE: TM) and Mitsubishi Financial (NYSE: MTU) are at the top of the heap, representing about 6% and 4% of net assets, respectively. And gamers will be pleased to find both Nintendo and Sony (NYSE: SNE) slugging it out for supremacy on the fund's roster of holdings. (Sony wins by a good margin and finishes in the Top 10. Sorry, Mario.) There's a lot to like about the iShares MSCI Japan Index Fund. Having made its debut more than 10 years ago, it is one of the pioneers among international ETFs and has attracted more than $13 billion in net assets. Its expenses are low at 0.59%, less than half of what the average actively managed international fund costs. This means that more of your money stays invested in the market to enhance your returns. The fund doesn't hedge against currency fluctuations, so if the dollar weakens against the yen (a very real possibility), investors would get the additional benefit of a performance boost related to more favorable currency terms. Of course, the opposite is also true: a stronger dollar versus the yen could hinder performance.