State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), the investment management arm of State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT) unveiled two new internationally oriented SPDR exchange-traded funds yesterday on the American Stock Exchange (Amex).
The new funds are the SPDR DJ Wilshire Global Real Estate ETF (RWO) and the SPDR S&P International Mid Cap ETF (MDD). RWO includes more than 240 commercial and residential real estate companies domiciled in 23 countries across the globe, including the U.S. The fund's annual expense ratio is .50 percent.
State Street also manages the SPDR Dow Jones Wilshire International Real Estate ETF (RWX), which is a pure-play international real estate fund. Unlike RWO, the fund excludes real estate companies based in the U.S. So far this year, international real estate has underperformed domestic real estate stocks. RWX has declined by 2.4 percent since the beginning of the year compared to an 8.7 percent gain for U.S.-based real estate companies (RWR).
MDD focuses on companies with market sizes between $2 billion and $5 billion. The underlying index contains more than 850 companies in 25 developed countries outside the U.S. The fund's expense ratio is 0.45 percent.
