Ishares

Ishares are a good way of investment with limited risk. This is a Barclays product and offers quite a variety of index funds(although they are called shares). For investors in Netherlands(where I am currently resident) standard brokers do not display this product although they are quoted in all major stock exchanges of europe. Neither does the help desk of brokers (like ABN AMRO bank ) know anything about them. That is because the search engine of these brokers are outdated and bad. Infact search is not possible for certain exchanges at all (like Canada).

But fortunately there is a way out. That is to have the ISIN code at hand. These are avalilable at the following ishares website. With this code one can do transaction over the internet.


Sources of Performance Difference
Precise reasons for performance difference vary between iShares funds.

• Transaction costs - Each trade involves a set of costs, including the spread between the bid and ask prices.
• Annual fees - ETF funds charge an annual fee that includes the cost of portfolio management and custody of the securities in the funds.
• Rebalance costs - Index providers, such as FTSE or S&P, regularly rebalance their indices to reflect securities entering or departing from their indices. In rebalancing, index providers do not take into account the costs and timing considerations of buying and selling securities.
• Portfolio optimisation - From time to time it is not optimal or possible for regulatory or operational reasons to exactly replicate the index portfolio. In these situations, index fund managers optimise the portfolio with the goal to achieve the index returns without holding the exact constituents of the index.
  

Investment advice:

Based on the strength of the brazilian economy the advice for investors is to take a look at the following ishare:

iShare MSCI Brazil(IBZL)
iShare MSCI Emerging Markets


Only downside to this that most of these are quoted in US dollar which is currently depreciating.

The ishares as with many funds gives the portfolio a risk diversification as it is based on averaging of selected share prices.


Useful links for ishares:

1. FAQ