ETF Watch: What Happened In iShares MSCI Taiwan Index? (EWT, TWN, TFC, FXI)

Today was one of the strangest days ever in the iShares MSCI Taiwan Index (NYSE: EWT) ETF.  In fact, you rarely ever see such trading action as we saw today in any ETF that tracks a foreign market.  At 3:25 PM EST we saw a headline that shares of the ETF were hated, pending a dissemination.

This looks like it was on reactions to China taking more steps to strengthen the ties between the countries.  China has agreed to allow Taiwan to participate in the WHO ruling body and announced a large investment in the country according to the WSJ.

Shares of this ETF were up 12% at $9.81 and the 52-week trading range is $6.42 to $17.50.  More importantly, we saw a whopping 72+ million shares trade hands.  It is unknown if that is a record or not, but that is over half of its entire float if the numbers are accurate.  A super-active day was 20 million shares in the past year.

To see if this excitement was happening elsewhere, we looked at related ETF’s and closed-end funds.  The The Taiwan Fund, Inc. (NYSE: TWN) closed-end fund rose almost 8% to $10.91 today; its 52-week trading range is $7.25 to $19.90.  The Taiwan Greater China Fund (NYSE: TFC) closed-end fund was up 10% at $4.50; its 52-week trading range is $2.81 to $7.71.

iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index (NYSE: FXI) is the ETF for the mainland FTSE/Xinhua China 25 index.   Its shares rose 4.6% to $31.96 and the 52-week range is $19.35 to $55.00.

JON C. OGG