I was asked the following:
I was wondering how do you judge how well iShares are doing? I was watching EWL, Swiss Ishares and it broke out today. However, since it does not belong to any sector/industry and it is from a different country, thus how do we go about looking at it?
Random "ETF" Roger may be a better person to answer this question but I'll give it a shot. The first thing that comes to mind for the country specific iShares is to compare them to the ETFs of other countries. In this case I'd probably pick the other European countries. But depending on your goal you may want to compare it to all the countries including the S&P 500.
Yahoo's ETF Browser may be helpful in this regard too.
If this is useful...
Two of EWL's largest components are Novartis and Roche. In the last month they are up 8% and 5% respectively.
Additionally the Swiss franc has rallied against the Australian dollar. The pair is a fear meter of sorts.
This may account for the move in EWL.
Certain countries play different roles in the world market and some like the US, Japan or Germany are big benchmark markets. I would classify Switzerland has a role player due to its bomb shelter attributes. hope that helps.