Displaying Country Weights for International ETFs in Google Earth<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

Google Earth is a great tool for looking at many different types of data.\u00a0 A quick Google search will show hundreds of on-line Google Earth projects which use the tool to display data on everything from\u00a0the health of marine ecosystems to the\u00a0status of U.S. airline flights.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

I've put together a\u00a0Python script to display the\u00a0country weights\u00a0for two international ETFs;\u00a0\u00a0 EFA is an iShares ETF which tracks the MSCI EAFE index, and VWO is a Vanguard ETF which tracks the MSCI Emerging Markets index.\u00a0 I used red placemarks for EFA and blue for VWO.\u00a0 In both cases, the area of the placemark is proportional to the country's weight in the respective fund.\u00a0 These weights vary over time with a country's market cap, so each country weight shown is for a particular date\u00a0(9\/30\/2010 for EFA and 11\/30\/2010 for VWO).<\/p>\r\n

A screenshot of the European section of\u00a0the map\u00a0is shown here:<\/p>\r\n

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Most of the countries in Western Europe are shown in red since they are part of the MSCI EAFE index of developed markets.\u00a0The marker size\u00a0and percent value\u00a0indicate each country's weight within EFA. The blue markers in Eastern Europe show countries which are part of the MSCI Emerging Markets index, and the maker size and percent value\u00a0indicate\u00a0the country's weight within VWO.<\/p>\r\n

I will\u00a0admit that this map\u00a0may have limited utility for helping you to make better investment decisions, but it is nevertheless interesting (to me anyway) to see how\u00a0each dollar invested\u00a0is distributed among the countries in the index.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

If you have downloaded the Google Earth plugin, a more interactive map can be seen here (controls on the left can be used to zoom in and out\u00a0and\u00a0tilt axis):<\/p>\r\n\r\n