Franklin FTSE Latin Price, Forecast, Insider, Ratings, Fundamentals & Signals

China and Hong Kong markets had a humbling 2023 with equities down more than 10%. Beijing has also begun stepping up tourism and travel promotions, granting visa-free entry to 11 countries, with Singapore and Thailand the latest to be included.

Bull vs. Bear is a weekly feature where the VettaFi writers' room takes opposite sides for a debate on controversial stocks, strategies, or market ideas — with plenty of discussion of ETF ideas to play either angle. For this edition of Bull vs.

Another week has gone, and it's foreign equities that led in the week's top-performing ETFs. Investors looked abroad to both commodities centers and events like Turkey's election in their ETFs.

The Franklin FTSE Latin America ETF is an index-based ETF that invests in the Latin America and Caribbean region of the Western Hemisphere (sort of). Investment selection is based on the FTSE Latin America RIC Capped Index. Despite the name, 90% of the assets are in two countries: Brazil and Mexico.

The latest inflation news in the U.S. may have investors looking elsewhere, with international and emerging markets equities an early bright spot in 2023. One area that has picked up interest in the foreign equities space has been Latin America, poised to feed a reopening Chinese economy with commodities.

The MSCI Latin America Index has performed better than the MSCI Emerging Market Index cumulatively over the past 5 and 7 years as well as over longer time periods, buoyed by its natural resource companies. The region is well placed to take advantage of the opportunities created by the renewable energy revolution with 54% of global lithium reserves concentrated there.

Water scarcity in Latin America is likely to intensify supply chain and operational disruptions, regulatory risks, and economic losses for businesses during the next five years. In Brazil, hydropower accounts for 65% of the electricity matrix.

Economies of Latin America and Caribbean have continued their strong post-pandemic rebound, but the winds are shifting as global financial conditions are tightening and commodity prices are reversing their upward trend, while inflationary pressures persist. The reopening of contact-intensive sectors, especially hospitality and travel, the unwinding of pandemic pent-up demand, and still favorable external financial conditions supported a solid expansion in the first half of the year, allowing services to catch up with manufacturing, and employment to reach pre-pandemic levels.

Rising rates and low valuations have lured investors to Latin America in 2022, with Reuters reporting that Latin American stock and bond portfolios bringing in about $18 billion of foreign capital year-to-date through February. The war in Ukraine has increased risk aversion among investors toward some sections of European markets, which is also steering investors [.

The Central Bank of Brazil has embarked on a series of shock-and-awe rate hikes in order to not fall further behind. Following its last meeting, Banxico said again that it expected inflation to be transitory, carefully echoing the Fed's Powell. Due to the magnitude of price shocks, and their spread across the economy, Banxico said it deemed it necessary to raise its policy rate.