Global ETF Carnage Continues

JC Parets
June 20, 2018

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Dollar strength has wreaked havoc on the group of ETFs that many people use to gain exposure to global equity markets. One downside of many of these ETFs is that they own the assets of the country they represent in their local currency, and since the vehicle is unhedged, changes in the exchange rate play an important role in their pricing. The Dollar Index has rallied roughly 8% since its February lows, and more dramatically against many emerging and developed market currencies not represented in the Dollar Index, which has exacerbated many of the price declines we've seen in this group of stocks.

Below is a performance chart of the 45 Global ETFs we track sorted in ascending order of their performance since the Dollar bottomed on February 15th. The median market in this group is down roughly 8.90%  since then, and already down 2.90% to to start this week.  The sharp declines we're seeing in areas, especially those in emerging markets like Turkey and Brazil which are down 36% and 28% respectively, have people wondering whether or not a bottom is near.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

While I can't go through every chart in this post, what I can tell you is what we're looking for before we can say a tradeable bottom is in. We want to see the majority of these Global ETFs meet our downside price targets with a bullish momentum divergence and/or failed breakdown to spark a rally.

A good example of this development is in the iShares MSCI Brazil Fund - $EWZ, but it's one of the few instances we've seen so far. Until we see this type of action across the majority of these Global ETFs, I think it's difficult to step in to try and pick a bottom.

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Thanks for reading and let us know if you have any questions!

Allstarcharts Team

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