EWT — iShares MSCI Taiwan ETF

What it is. EWT (iShares MSCI Taiwan ETF, BlackRock) replicates the MSCI Taiwan 25-50 index, grouping the 87 largest listed companies in Taiwan with capping rules: no issuer may exceed 25% of the index and those weighing more than 5% cannot add up to more than 50% combined. Assets under management $11.24 billion, annual fee 0.59%, annual dividend with a TTM yield of ~2.70% ($2.82 per share over the last twelve months). It is the reference ETF for Taiwan exposure from a dollar account.\n\nWhat's inside — the AI chain. Top 10 ≈ 48% of the basket: TSMC 20.45%, MediaTek 6.51%, Delta Electronics 4.08%, Hon Hai Precision (Foxconn) 3.49%, ASE Technology 2.77%, Elite Material 2.70%, Unimicron 2.25%, Nan Ya Plastics 1.91%, Accton Technology 1.83%, United Microelectronics 1.82%. By sector: electronic technology 64.8%, financials 15.25%. The composition is not accidental: Taiwan concentrates the world's advanced semiconductor manufacturing, and the basket captures the entire chain — from foundry (TSMC, UMC) to packaging (ASE), substrates (Unimicron), server power and cooling (Delta), final assembly (Foxconn) and connectivity (Accton).\n\nThe price thesis. 12-month return: +85.54% with dividends. Year-to-date 2026 return: +0.37% — essentially flat. 52-week range: $57.56-$112.78; our $105.23 entry sits ~7% below the high. In other words: an extraordinary year followed by eight months of sideways digestion. We are buying consolidation, not euphoria.\n\nWhy the basket and not TSMC directly. TSMC is the jewel, but the ETF adds the layers of the chain that also capture AI spending: advanced packaging (where ASE holds a dominant position) is today a bottleneck as critical as the foundry itself; Delta's power supplies and cooling are mandatory inputs in every AI rack; Foxconn assembles the servers. The basket also neutralizes the risk of a single company stumbling through a node transition. And it pays ~2.7% a year, more than most tech indices.\n\nThe risk, unvarnished. China-Taiwan geopolitical risk is real, impossible to quantify and not diversifiable within this position: any escalation in the strait would hit this basket first and hardest. Add concentration (TSMC >20%, electronics ~65%), the historical cyclicality of semiconductors and Taiwan dollar currency risk. The counterweight to those risks is that Taiwan is, today, irreplaceable critical infrastructure of the world economy — and that is also a form of moat.\n\nIn the portfolio. Third country ETF after FLKR (South Korea) and MCHI (China). Taiwan completes the Asian technology-manufacturing triangle: memory (Korea), market and platforms (China) and advanced logic semiconductors (Taiwan). The same pattern as always: an entire market, a reasonable fee, a real dividend and the world's largest issuer behind it.