Three More ETFs To Watch On Inflation Concerns

Inflation has become quite the bugaboo for emerging markets ETFs in 2011. China has tried and tried to cool its scorching economy and for the most part, failed. India keeps raising interest to ward off rising food prices and is only now just starting to see small results. The big boys aren't the only big inflation problems. Indonesia and Thailand-specific ETFs are 2010 darlings turned 2011 goats. Rising currencies in Latin America have plauged ETFs such as the iShares MSCI Chile Investable Market Index Fund ECH and the iShares MSCI Peru All Capped Index Fund EPU. Unfortunately, these aren't the only ETFs where inflation could be an issue this year. Here are three more that are going to have fight the inflation monster to keep up their winning ways. 1) iShares MSCI Philippines Investable Market Index Fund EPHE: EPHE is a new ETF and has done pretty well in short amount of time, but this is a guilt by proximity play. Inflation of just 3% in 2010 was considered benign and it is expected to remain that way through the first half of this year, but with the Philippines in the same region as Indonesia and Thailand, EPHE could fall victim to doubts that the Philippines is really controlling inflation than its regional counterparts. Plus, economists do expect an uptick in inflation later this year. 2) Market Vectors Poland ETF PLND: Poland ETFs were able to shrug off Europe's debt woes and post some nice gains in 2010. Apparently those are the advantages of NOT being in the EU, but Poland's central bank raised interest rates last week for the first time since 2008, a sign the bank is concerned about inflation. We're not forecasting Asia-esque problems for Poland, but this is an inflation scenario to monitor in 2011. Inflation in Poland last month was 3.1%, the highest in 11 months, according to the Financial Times. 3) Market Vectors Russia ETF RSX: Russia's Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach said on Tuesday that Russian inflation could reach 7%-8% this year. That shows the epidemic of rising global food prices is touching far more than just a few developing nations. Throw in higher oil prices that are likely to boost the ruble and Russian inflation is on the radar in 2011.