International ETFs - performance report.

Always at the end of the year you can read various statistics about performance of stocks, funds or other investment instruments. Usually you can find comparison of the best or the worst performing investments. This time I run my stock screener for international ETFs to see which exchange traded funds were leaders and laggards. I have listed 3 worst and best performing ETFs (yearly return) which you can trade on US exchange.

Laggards:
Market Vector Russia (RSX) -72%
iShares Belgium (EWK) -63%
iShares Austria (EWO) -62%

Surprisingly two developed markets among laggards, Belgium nd Austria. I have been posting about that case in my last ETF performance report. On average European ETFs are down 50%.

Leaders:
iShares Japan (EWJ) -29%
iShares Switzerland (EWL) -32%
iShares Chile (ECH) -37%

Strengthening of currencies (Swiss franc and Japanese Yen) in low interest rate environments helped Japanese and Swiss ETFs to outperform local stock markets indexes.