EWI vs FLGB

EWIBiShares MSCI Italy ETF

FLGBAFranklin FTSE United Kingdom ETF

In short

EWI Italy in one ticker, and that ticker has been trading since 1996. EWI holds a capped basket of roughly two dozen large Italian companies, a concentrated slice of one economy rather than a spread across Europe.

FLGB Britain in one ticker for nine basis points. Franklin's UK tracker follows a capped FTSE index of roughly 110 British companies and charges a small fraction of what the typical index fund in its peer group costs.

Stated mandate

EWI The fund seeks to track an index of Italian equities.

FLGB The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the performance of the FTSE UK RIC Capped Index.

Why people hold it

• EWI Launched in 1996, one of the original single-country funds, and now a multi-billion-dollar fund. Decades of live operating history, not a launch-week experiment.
• No stock picking, no overlays: it tracks the MSCI Italy 25/50 Index, and it sits in the upper tier of developed single-country funds on our review.ishares.com
• The index is a capped version, limiting how large any single holding can grow. That matters when the whole portfolio is only around 25 names.ishares.com
• One trade gets the listed heart of the Italian market, instead of assembling ADRs name by name. Moderately traded, with the usual iShares plumbing behind it.

• FLGB 0.09% a year, a fraction of the median fee across the index trackers we grade. Cheap is the whole pitch for single-country beta, and this one delivers it.
• One trade, roughly 110 UK companies. A passive, rules-based mandate tied to the FTSE UK RIC Capped Index, running since its 2017 launch.
• Stands in the top quartile of its plain-index-wrapper peer group, and the mandate data behind that read is high confidence.

Worth knowing

• EWI The 0.50% fee is exactly the median for developed single-country funds, though cheaper builds exist in the group: FLKR and FLAU both charge 0.09%.
• Around 25 stocks, one country, one currency. Concentration in a single market is the point here, and iShares flags that risk in the fund's own materials.ishares.com
• Distributions come annually or semiannually, so any income arrives in lumps rather than a monthly drip.

• FLGB Single-country by design: UK listings only, so there is no cushion from other markets inside the fund. Broad global trackers like VT spread that bet differently.
• Moderately traded rather than a volume monster, so limit orders are the sane way in and out.
• Distributions arrive once or twice a year, not monthly. Income lands in lumps.

Full EWI profile⁠

Full FLGB profile⁠