A word of warning for traders who’ve been pouring billions into Chinese-stock ETFs like never before: The strategy is not only prone to big reversals, it has also lost a cohort of ill-timed investors a fortune over the past decade and counting.
While these exchange-traded funds have rallied at times, creating short-term trading opportunities, their performance over the long haul has made them some of the biggest wealth destroyers among US ETFs. Over the past decade in fact, Chinese ETFs rank alongside the flagship fund of Cathie Wood — the onetime star money manager whose stock bets have floundered since the pandemic — in producing the biggest erosion of asset value for US ETF investors, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.