Harvard’s emerging market ETFs

In its SEC filing last September, the Harvard’s Endowment Fund revealed something interesting – it had loaded up on emerging market ETFs. At the time the fund held a hefty number of shares of the iShares MSCI Braxil and iShares FTSE/Xinhua China. But also less prominent markets as well like Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and South Korea. The top ETFs held by Harvard along with number of shares are listed below.

As Harvard continues to unwind the damage done during the downturn, emerging markets ETFs have provided some added liquidity and diversification into new and burgeoning markets. And for a fund heavily laden with illiquid assets like real estate, the use of ETFs to offset that makes sense. What will be interesting is to watch where their ETF allocations have moved through 2011, especially after a summer dominated by debt crises and the U.S. downgrade.Will Harvard continue to push into emerging markets through ETFs – or will they pull back. Stay tuned….I’ll revisit their holdings as soon as the information is available.