Frontier Markets ETF Now Available

I thought I knew just about everything there was to know about exchange traded fund asset classes (probably not the safest assumption in the world), but I was just schooled a few minutes ago when I recently read that the first U.S.- listed ETF for frontier markets was made available by Claymore Securities.

Umm, so what exactly is a frontier market?

Needless to say, I was asking myself the same question. According to Wikipedia, a frontier market is a term commonly used to describe business and market activity in some of the smaller and less accessible — but still investable — countries of the developing world. Sounds exotic, huh?

So which countries are we talking about here?

The Claymore Frontier Markets ETF will correspond to the performance of an equity index comprised of securities from the following countries: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, Zimbabwe, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Jamaica, Panama and Trinidad & Tobago.

Should I invest in this ETF?

Honestly, I can’t make that call based on the limited amount of research I’ve done on it, but I think it’s safe to assume that the old “greater returns / greater risk” adage applies. If your portfolio is a little low on emerging markets, I’d be pretty tempted to take a small position in frontier markets, but personally, I’m going to sit this one out and wait to see a little performance before making a call.