FLMX vs KSA

FLMXBFranklin FTSE Mexico ETF

KSACiShares MSCI Saudi Arabia ETF

In short

FLMX Mexico exposure at a discount. Franklin's tracker charges 0.19%, a fraction of what single-country emerging-market funds usually cost, and holds a compact basket of the country's largest listed companies.

KSA One ticker, one country. KSA holds roughly 120 Saudi-listed companies through a capped MSCI index and has been doing it since 2015: a pure play on the Saudi market, not a sliver inside a broad emerging-markets fund.

Stated mandate

FLMX The Fund seeks to track the performance of the FTSE Mexico Capped Index before fees and expenses through an indexing strategy, investing at least 80% of assets in index components or related exposure.

KSA The fund seeks to track an index of Saudi Arabian equities and provides targeted exposure to companies in Saudi Arabia.

Why people hold it

• FLMX At 0.19%, one of the cheapest wrappers for Mexican equities: well under the roughly 0.59% median in its single-country EM cohort, and under EWW's 0.50%.
• Plain, rules-based mandate: it tracks the FTSE Mexico Capped Index, keeping at least 80% of assets in index components or related exposure. No manager guesswork.
• The index is a capped one, which limits how much of the portfolio any single Mexican mega-cap can occupy.
• Live since 2017 and, on our review, one of the stronger implementations among single-country emerging-market funds.

• KSA Targeted exposure to Saudi Arabian equities in a US-listed, US-traded wrapper, tracking the MSCI Saudi Arabia IMI 25/50 Index.
• About 120 names reaching from large caps down to small (the IMI part), with the index's 25/50 caps limiting how big any one holding can grow.
• One of the more actively traded funds in the single-country emerging-market group, with assets in the hundreds of millions behind it.
• Listed in 2015, a long tenure for a niche single-country fund, and the portfolio has held closely to what the mandate says it owns.

Worth knowing

• FLMX Thinly traded. Spreads can run wider than at the category's busiest funds, which adds to the real cost of getting in and out beyond the headline fee.
• One country, roughly 40 stocks. Concentration is the point, but it means Mexican policy, oil and peso moves all land straight in a dollar-based return.
• Income arrives quarterly, not monthly.

• KSA 0.75% a year sits above the 0.59% median for single-country emerging-market funds, and well above the cheapest in that group (FLMX at 0.19%).
• Everything rides on one market. Saudi-specific news moves the entire fund, with no other country in the basket to soften it.
• Inside its single-country emerging-market peer group it sits in the lower tier, mainly on fee and on how closely results have matched the index.

Full FLMX profile⁠

Full KSA profile⁠