EMCS vs ESGE

EMCSAXtrackers MSCI Emerging Markets Climate Selection ETF

ESGEAiShares ESG Aware MSCI EM ETF

In short

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.

ESGE The ESG emerging-markets fund built to not feel different: it screens MSCI's EM universe for environmental, social and governance traits while keeping risk and return close to the parent index, for 0.25% a year.

Stated mandate

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.

ESGE The fund seeks to track large- and mid-capitalization emerging-market equities with positive environmental, social, and governance characteristics, while maintaining risk and return characteristics similar to its parent index.

Why people hold it

• 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.

• ESGE 0.25% a year, below the typical fee among ESG emerging-market ETFs.
• "Aware" is the whole design: the index tilts toward better ESG-rated companies while targeting risk and return characteristics similar to the standard MSCI EM parent.ishares.com
• Trading since 2016 and now a multi-billion-dollar, actively traded fund, which is a rare combination in a corner full of small, thinly used products.
• Does exactly what its name says: full-time exposure to large- and mid-cap emerging-market stocks via the MSCI Emerging Markets Extended ESG Focus Index, one of the cleanest mandate fits in its peer group.ishares.com

Worth knowing

• 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.

• ESGE It is a tilt, not a purge. Because the index chases parent-like risk and return, the lineup stays close to mainstream EM rather than a deep-green portfolio.ishares.com
• Screening narrows the field to roughly 300 stocks, so holdings and country weights drift from a plain emerging-markets index fund.
• Not the cheapest badge in the aisle: sibling LDEM runs 0.16%, though it takes a stricter ESG-leaders approach.

Full EMCS profile⁠

Full ESGE profile⁠