CHIQ vs FLCH

CHIQCGlobal X MSCI China Consumer Discretionary ETF

FLCHAFranklin FTSE China ETF

In short

CHIQ A 2009-vintage bet on the Chinese consumer, not the American one: roughly 60 Chinese consumer discretionary names in a peer group otherwise stacked with US retail and S&P 500 sector funds.

FLCH Cheap and wide, in the best way. FLCH holds roughly a thousand Chinese stocks and charges 0.19% a year, a fraction of what most single-country China funds ask. Whole market, small toll.

Stated mandate

CHIQ The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the MSCI China Consumer Discretionary 10/50 Index.

FLCH The Fund seeks investment results that closely correspond, before fees and expenses, to the performance of the FTSE China RIC Capped Index.

Why people hold it

• CHIQ The rare consumer discretionary ETF that skips the US shopper entirely. It tracks an MSCI index of Chinese consumer names, so it moves with demand in China.globalxetfs.com
• Live since 2009, so its record spans multiple boom-and-bust turns in Chinese equities rather than one recent stretch.
• The 10/50 index design caps issuer weights, so a single mega-cap e-commerce name cannot quietly grow into most of the portfolio.globalxetfs.com
• Plain passive plumbing: a rules-based index fund in a standard 1940 Act wrapper, no swaps or leverage layered on top.

• FLCH 0.19% a year, against a roughly 0.70% median for China funds. It also undercuts the category stalwarts MCHI and GXC, both at 0.59%.
• About 1,000 holdings, so you own the long tail of Chinese listings rather than a short list of mega-cap headline names.
• One job, done tightly: mirror the FTSE China RIC Capped Index before fees. On tracking it ranks among the strongest builds in its China peer group.sec.gov

Worth knowing

• CHIQ At 0.65% a year, it costs several times the 0.08% charged by the largest US consumer sector funds (XLY, FDIS). That is the toll for packaged single-country access.
• One sector, one country, about 60 stocks: Beijing policy shifts, regulation and currency moves all land in the same basket at once.
• It changes hands far less often than the big US sector ETFs, so spreads and order type matter more at the point of trade.

• FLCH It is China or nothing. Policy shifts, regulatory news and the currency drive the ride, with no other market in the basket to cushion it.
• Mid-sized and only moderately traded next to the category's giants, so bid-ask spreads can bite more on larger orders.
• Cash comes once or twice a year, not monthly. This is an equity index vehicle, not an income schedule.

Full CHIQ profile⁠

Full FLCH profile⁠