GREK vs SPEU

GREKCGlobal X MSCI Greece ETF

SPEUAState Street SPDR Portfolio Europe ETF

In short

GREK Greece in one ticker. Launched in 2011 with Athens at the center of Europe's debt crisis, GREK is still the only US-listed ETF built to hold Greek stocks directly: roughly 30 names, with banks in the driver's seat.

SPEU Europe in one line item, priced like a core holding. A 0.07% fee buys the whole STOXX Europe Total Market Index, large caps down to small, in a fund that has been running since 2002.

Stated mandate

GREK The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the MSCI All Greece Select 25/50 Index.

SPEU The fund seeks to deliver returns generally corresponding to the total return of the STOXX Europe Total Market Index.

Why people hold it

• GREK Global X calls it the first and only US-listed ETF that directly targets Greek stocks, so the exposure comes from Athens-listed companies, not a sliver of a broad Europe fund.globalxetfs.com
• The index reaches past the handful of giants: companies classified, headquartered or listed in Greece that do most of their business there, filtered by a minimum trading-liquidity screen.msci.com
• The 25/50 rule stops any one name from swallowing the fund: no single issuer above 25%, and all positions over 5% capped together at under half the index.msci.com
• The 0.56% fee sits right at the median for single-country Europe funds, so a hard-to-reach market costs no novelty premium.

• SPEU Charges 0.07% a year, versus a 0.28% median for its peer group. That is core-index pricing on a single-region fund.
• Total-market index, not a blue-chip list: over a thousand western European stocks spanning large, mid and small caps.
• Launched in 2002, so it has run through multiple European market cycles under State Street.
• Mandate is plain and literal: match the total return of one published European index, with no sector or country tilts bolted on.

Worth knowing

• GREK About 30 stocks, concentrated in Greek shares and the financials sector, means one country's politics or one sector's stumble moves the whole fund.sec.gov
• The prospectus flags banking industry and currency risk: interest rates, regulation, credit conditions and the euro's path all show up in results.globalxetfs.com
• Cheaper single-country Europe options exist (DAX at 0.20%), and GREK trades moderately rather than heavily, so order size and timing matter more here.

• SPEU Trading is light next to the giant international funds. Limit orders matter more here, and spreads can widen when volume is thin.
• Europe only. Broad international peers like VEU and IXUS cover Asia and emerging markets too, at 0.04% and 0.07%.
• Holdings trade in euros, pounds and francs, so currency swings against the dollar move your return alongside the stocks.

Full GREK profile⁠

Full SPEU profile⁠