Japan, Germany, South Africa Most Attractive Markets?

Exchange traded funds caught fire in 2013, passing $2.4 trillion in global AUM and giving investors great returns (much as you’d expect with surging equities), but even for investors who know not to use ETFs for market timing strategies, deciding which exchange you want to invest in is an important question.

Country selection strategy an important source of alpha

“Despite the limited breadth of negative performing countries, the overall spread of returns across countries was relatively wide, with the worst performer, Brazil at -4.6%, and Sweden at 3.9%. This suggests that country selection remains an important source of alpha for global investors,” says a recent Citi report from the banks global quantitative team led by Chris Montagu.

But past returns aren’t the...