Courtesy of the ETF Professor at Benzinga.com

MarketsMuse extends our warm wishes to all of those celebrating the Jewish New Year and extending  you  “L’Shanah Tovah”

Today’s piece from ETF Professor couldn’t be better timed considering the upcoming (Oct 11)  European Investing & Trading Summit at London’s May Fair Hotel with a special ‘carve-out’ focused on ETF trading and liquidity across the Euro landscape.

Summit Coordinator MarketsMedia advises us at press time that the ETF trading session, hosted by WallachBeth Capital MD Andy McOrmond, is oversubscribed, but additional tix are being made available.

In theory, 2012 should have been a much darker year for ETFs tracking eurozone nations. Headlines have included speculation about Greece’s imminent departure from the eurozone, the need for a massive bailout of Spanish banks and Italy not being far behind in the bailout buffet line.

Then there are these facts. Italy is mired in a recession. Spain’s unemployment rate is over 20 percent and Greece could make the ominous switch to emerging market from developed market status.

Those are just a few of the issues Europe ETFs have had to deal with in 2012. Apparently, markets are not all that logical because while many global investors have anointed U.S. equities the toast of the developed world because the SPDR S&P 500 SPY -0.42% is up 16 percent year-to-date, some eurozone ETFs are doing quite well, too.

iShares MSCI France Index Fund EWQ -1.57%

France departed the AAA credit rating club earlier this year, but the CAC 40 Index has posted a gain of 11.2 percent year-to-date. The iShares MSCI France Index Fund has been even better with a gain of nearly 13 percent. A large part of the reason for EWQ’s good fortune is that many of its components derive the bulk of their revenue from outside the eurozone.

For example, Total TOT -1.56% and Sanofi SNY -1.40% account for about 22 percent of EWQ’s weight and neither is eurozone dependent. EWQ needs to move above $22.65 to confirm another breakout.

iShares MSCI Belgium Investable Market Index Fund EWK -0.94%

Belgium is another surprise eurozone winner this year, particularly because the country endured some ratings downgrades in late 2011. In fact, 2011 was so rough on EWK it was outperformed by the iShares MSCI Spain Index Fund EWP -2.96% and the iShares S&P Europe 350 Index Fund IEV -1.28% . Continue reading →