Freedom 100 Emerging Markets ETF

FRDM

Market cap $1.48B

FRDM ETF has outperformed major emerging market benchmarks due to strategic overweights in Poland, Chile, Korea, and tech, while avoiding China and India. The fund's low valuation (12.4x earnings, PEG 1.3x) and strong technicals support its recent alpha, but liquidity is a concern with a wide bid/ask spread. Despite stellar momentum and a bullish long-term trend, bearish RSI divergence and seasonal weakness suggest caution in the near term.

Financial technology (fintech), broadly speaking, allows the remote delivery of financial services to businesses and individuals through computers or mobile devices. Fintech encompasses everything from smartphone apps to complex blockchain-enabled networks that facilitate financial transactions.

FRDM ETF offers unique diversification by focusing on emerging markets ranked by freedom, reducing political risks and lowering correlation with US markets. The fund excludes authoritarian regimes like China, prioritizing transparency and freedom, which has improved returns and drawdown management versus traditional EM ETFs. FRDM's sector and country allocations—favoring Taiwan, South Korea, and Chile—capitalize on macro resilience and global tech trends, despite omitting China and underweight India.

The Freedom 100 Emerging Markets ETF uses a "freedom-weighted" strategy to outperform traditional market-weighted EM funds by excluding regimes like China and Russia. FRDM's methodology filters 24 emerging market countries based on liquidity, market cap, and freedom scores, resulting in a diversified portfolio of around 100 stocks. The fund's higher volatility is offset by its positive upside and downside capture, making it suitable for aggressive investors seeking targeted EM exposure.

Investors may want to reduce their exposure to the world's largest emerging market.

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Freedom 100 Emerging Markets ETF focuses on investing in about 100 companies from emerging markets based on a Freedom Score. The FRDM ETF is concentrated in large cap companies, with heavy exposure to Taiwan and overweight in the technology sector. FRDM has outperformed EEM and ex-China EM ETFs since its inception in 2019.

Emerging markets are off to a sluggish start to 2024. The Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (VWO) was up 1.9% year-to-date through March 20, lagging the S&P 500 Index's nearly 10% gain.