EMCS vs LDEM

EMCSAXtrackers MSCI Emerging Markets Climate Selection ETF

LDEMAiShares ESG MSCI EM Leaders 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.

LDEM The budget door into strict ESG in emerging markets. LDEM tracks an MSCI index that keeps the best ESG scorers within each sector, and charges 0.16% to do it, well under the going rate in its peer group.

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.

LDEM The fund seeks to track an index of emerging-market companies with high environmental, social, and governance characteristics relative to their sector peers.

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.

• LDEM At 0.16%, it undercuts the typical fee in its ESG emerging-markets peer group by a wide margin, so less of a volatile asset class's return goes to the manager.
• Best-in-class logic: companies are judged against sector peers instead of whole industries getting banned, so the sector mix stays closer to a plain EM fund.ishares.com
• The index caps any single issuer at 5%, a real check in emerging markets, where a handful of giants can crowd out everything else.ishares.com
• No cleverness beyond the screen: a straight index build of roughly 400 names, and one of the tighter mandate fits in its ESG emerging-markets group.

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.

• LDEM Small asset base and thin trading volume, so spreads can run wider than on the household-name emerging-markets funds.
• Distributions land once or twice a year rather than quarterly, so income arrives in lumps.
• Sibling ESGE runs the looser ESG Aware screen at 0.25%. LDEM costs less and screens harder, which means a narrower, more exclusionary lineup.

Full EMCS profile⁠

Full LDEM profile⁠