BKEM vs EEMA

BKEMABNY Mellon Emerging Markets Equity ETF

EEMABiShares MSCI Emerging Markets Asia ETF

In short

BKEM The whole emerging world, priced like an afterthought. BNY Mellon charges 0.11% to hold well over a thousand large- and mid-cap stocks across developing markets. Broad, cheap, and very quiet.

EEMA Emerging markets, minus the detour. EEMA owns the Asian engine room (China, Taiwan, Korea, India) and skips Latin America and EMEA entirely, spread across roughly 900 large- and mid-cap names with caps on the giants.

Stated mandate

BKEM The fund is designed to follow the performance of an emerging-markets large- and mid-cap equity index.

EEMA The fund seeks to track an index of large- and mid-cap equities from emerging Asian countries, providing diversified exposure to Asian emerging-market equities.

Why people hold it

• BKEM 0.11% a year puts it near the bottom of the emerging-markets fee shelf, well under what the typical fund in the category charges.
• Roughly 1,800 holdings, so you own the mid-cap tail of emerging markets, not just the handful of mega-caps that dominate the better-known indexes.
• Buys the full emerging-markets basket rather than carving out China the way top-rated peers XCEM and VEXC do. One allocation decision you do not have to make.
• Plain indexing, run the same way since the 2020 launch: it hews closely to its Solactive benchmark instead of drifting off-mandate.

• EEMA Pure emerging Asia: the index covers only EM Asian countries, so Taiwan, China, Korea and India carry the fund without Brazil or Saudi Arabia riding along.ishares.com
• The MSCI EM Asia Custom Capped Index limits any single issuer to 25% and all 5%-plus names to 25% combined, so one mega-cap chipmaker cannot quietly become the whole fund.mutualfunds.com
• Running since 2012 and holding roughly 900 large- and mid-cap stocks, it hews closely to the mandate on the tin and sits in the upper half of its emerging-markets peer group.

Worth knowing

• BKEM Thinly traded. Spreads can widen, so order size and timing matter more here than with the category's household names.
• A small fund next to the emerging-markets giants, which is worth knowing if scale and deep secondary-market liquidity are on your checklist.
• Emerging-markets equity carries currency and single-country political swings; 1,800 names spread that around but do not erase it. Distributions come quarterly.

• EEMA The 0.49% fee lands at the median for emerging-markets funds, while broad EM trackers like VEXC (0.07%) and BKEM (0.11%) charge a fraction of that.
• Asia-only means China and Taiwan do the heavy lifting. Peers such as XCEM and VEXC strip China out; this one leans in.
• Mid-sized and moderately traded rather than a mega-fund, so spreads can run wider than on the largest EM ETFs. It also distributes infrequently, not monthly.

Full BKEM profile⁠

Full EEMA profile⁠