This India ETF is beating its main rivals — and the S&P 500 — in 2024

Published Sun, Feb 11 20246:28 AM EST

Jesse Pound @/in/jesse-pound @jesserpound

India is becoming a favorite emerging market of investors looking for long-term upside, and one ETF has done a better job at capturing those returns than its peers. The WisdomTree India Earnings ETF (EPI) has a total return of 6.6% through Feb. 8, according to FactSet, and is up 18.7% over the past three months. EPI 3M mountain WisdomTree's EPI has been outperforming other major India ETFs. That makes it the best performing of the five biggest India ETFs, with the iShares MSCI India ETF (INDA) and the Franklin FTSE India ETF (FLIN) both up less than 4% year to date.The WisdomTree fund is also beating The S & P 500, which up less than 5% over the same period. The WisdomTree fund has been a long-term winner as well, with an average annualized return of roughly 12% over the past decade. A key difference for EPI is that it is based on an index that weights stocks by their total net income, which keeps investors from overpaying for growth, WisdomTree global chief investment officer Jeremy Schwartz told CNBC. "The story on India has been that it's got one of the better population profiles. ... It's got a long-term growth story, but people know that so they pay so much for it," Schwartz said. Another reason for the recent outperformance could be EPI's broader collection of stocks. The fund has more than 400 holdings, including some smaller cap companies, significantly more than some of its key competitors. And, notably, the second-best performing major India ETF this year is the iShares MSCI India Small-Cap ETF (SMIN) . "Most of the large cap indexes for India today, they're 50, 75, 100 stocks. ... But we have over 400 companies," Schwartz said. The fund's success is winning over investors, having brought in nearly $400 million of net inflows this year, according to FactSet. It now has about $2.5 billion in assets. To be sure, investing in emerging markets is not without risks. Schwartz pointed to a parliamentary election this Spring as a potential risk to India's rally. One caveat about the fund itself is that EPI sports an expense ratio of 0.85%. That is above the 0.65% of the iShares INDA ETF and the 0.19% of Franklin Templeton's FLIN.