Eaton Vance is launching a broadly diversified emerging markets fund that has less correlation to stock market happenings in the developed world. The launch of the Structured Emerging Markets Fund comes at a time when emerging markets have lost significant ground and flows out of these funds have heated up.
Bob Breshock, director of private client services at Parametric Portfolio Associates, an Eaton Vance subsidiary that is managing the fund, said many emerging markets funds focus on the four of the largest countries, Brazil, South Africa, Korea and Taiwan. But a fund structured this way ends up being highly correlated to the developed world. Eaton Vance wanted a fund that underweights the larger countries and emphasizes the smaller economies.
Parametric launched a tax-managed version of the fund in the mid-1990s. The tax-managed version of the fund has $557 million and has an after-tax, five-year record of 22.34%. Morgan Mohrman, senior v.p. and director of marketing at Eaton Vance, said offering a non-tax managed version of the fund is part of a larger strategy at the firm to provide both types of funds to investors.