EEMX vs EMCS

EEMXBState Street SPDR MSCI Emerging Markets Fossil Fuel Reserves Free ETF

EMCSAXtrackers MSCI Emerging Markets Climate Selection ETF

In short

EEMX One rule, cleanly applied: MSCI's emerging markets benchmark minus every company that owns oil, gas or coal reserves. State Street planted this flag in EM first, back in 2016, and left the other thousand-odd names alone.

EMCS A screened take on emerging markets at core-tracker pricing: 0.15% a year for roughly 70 names carved out of a global selection index. Cheap enough to sit beside the plain-vanilla EM giants, narrow enough to look nothing like them.

Stated mandate

EEMX The fund seeks to track the MSCI Emerging Markets ex Fossil Fuels Index before fees and expenses. Its strategy provides emerging-markets equity exposure while excluding companies that own fossil-fuel reserves.

EMCS The fund seeks results generally corresponding, before fees and expenses, to the performance of its MSCI climate-selection index. The index represents large- and mid-capitalization companies across emerging-market countries and applies ESG and climate screens.

Why people hold it

• EEMX One legible screen, not a scoring system: owners of fossil fuel reserves are out, everything else stays. You can explain the portfolio in a sentence.ssga.com
• At 0.30% it undercuts the median fee in its values-screened EM peer group, and the screen is applied literally: the name is the methodology.
• About a thousand emerging-markets holdings, so pulling out the reserve owners still leaves a broad index rather than a narrow bet.
• State Street bills it as the first emerging markets fossil fuel reserves free ETF, running since 2016, so the record spans several full EM cycles.ssga.com

• EMCS Costs 0.15% a year, well under the roughly 0.66% median for its EM index peer group and a fraction of EEM's 0.72%.
• Rules-based mandate, no discretion bolted on: it takes the emerging-market slice of a roughly 500-stock global selection index screened on climate and ESG criteria.sec.gov
• Concentrated on purpose: roughly 70 large- and mid-cap names instead of the several hundred in broad EM benchmarks, so the screens actually show up in the portfolio.
• Live since 2018 and one of the stronger implementations in its MSCI emerging-markets peer group.

Worth knowing

• EEMX Reserve ownership is the only line drawn. Refiners, coal-burning utilities and other heavy emitters that hold no reserves can still be in the portfolio.ssga.com
• It trades thinly next to the giant EM index funds, so the bid-ask spread is a real part of the cost of getting in and out.
• Cheaper screened EM options sit in the same group, including LDEM at 0.16% and ESGE at 0.25%.

• EMCS Thinly traded next to the EM heavyweights like IEMG and EEM, so spreads can run wider and larger orders push the price around more.
• Renamed twice since launch (ESG Leaders, then Climate Selection, now Select), each time with index and objective changes. Read the current prospectus, not the old ticker's story.dws.com
• Cash comes once or twice a year rather than monthly, and a portfolio this narrow can drift from broad EM returns in either direction.

Full EEMX profile⁠

Full EMCS profile⁠