A Better Web With 10 New SPDRs
July 23, 2008

SAN DIEGO - (ETFguide.com) - State Street Global announced the launch of 10 new SPDR ETFs. The new set of ETFs provides exposure to international industry sectors. Each ETF is linked to an industry sub-index of the  S&P/Citigroup World ex U.S. Broad Market Index.   

The respective indexes hold between 70 and 1,300 securities from the following sectors: consumer discretionary, consumer staples, energy, financials, health care, industrials, materials, technology, telecommunications and utilities. The expense ratio for all 10 ETFs is 0.50%.

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The country exposure of each ETF varies. Where the SPDR S&P International Energy Sector ETF (Ticker: IPW) has a 53% exposure to the UK and Canada, the SPDR S&P International Consumer Discretionary Sector ETF (Ticker: IPD) has a 36% weighting in just Japan. The SPDR S&P International Technology Sector ETF (Ticker: IPK), with 45% has even more exposure to Japan. The SPDR S&P International Financial Sector ETF (Ticker: IPF) is less concentrated and offers more diversification, with a 36% weighting in Japan, UK and Canada.  

So far, WisdomTree was the only company to offer a complete suite of international sector ETFs. While the SPDR components consist of passively selected securities (part of the broad market umbrella index) which are weighted by market capitalization (free float), the WisdomTree constituents are screened to include only dividend paying companies and are weighted based on the component's regular cash dividend.

>> click here to search our database for all international industry sector ETFs   

It will be interesting to see how the performance numbers of the two different styles compare.

List of new SPDR International Sector ETFs: