Two investors buy "emerging markets" on the same day. One buys IEMG, the other VWO. Both hold Taiwan at more than a quarter of the fund, both hold India, both hold a China that is larger than any single code in the filing admits. Then the difference: the IEMG holder owns 22 cents of Korea per dollar. The VWO holder owns none. Not a little — none. One index provider calls Korea a developed market and the other does not, and that classification decision moves a fifth of the portfolio.
That is the kind of thing this series exists to show. Episode 1 mapped VXUS, the whole world ex-US in one fund. This episode takes the emerging-markets slice — eight US-registered funds, $441 billion between them, filings for April to June 2026 — and asks where the dollar goes and how that has changed since 2019.
What the filings say, in one paragraph: Taiwan has doubled (IEMG 12.4 cents in 2019, 25.8 now; VWO 13.9 to 28.9), and one company, TSMC, is one dollar in eight of the broad funds. China has halved in IEMG once its three codes are added together (36.6 cents at the November 2020 peak, 19.3 now) and is filed under different codes by different managers — Cayman by iShares, Hong Kong by Vanguard, China by Avantis, for the same Tencent. India rose to a fifth of both funds by late 2024 and has given some back. Korea in IEMG went from 12 to 22 cents in a single half-year. Pooled across the eight: Taiwan 27.8, India 13.7, Korea 13.0, China 21.8, Brazil 3.9, South Africa 3.1, Saudi Arabia 2.8, Mexico 2.0.
Nothing here is a view on any country or fund; every figure is a filed weight with its date.
Data as of each fund's latest filed period (IEMG 2026-05-31, VWO 2026-04-30, EEM 2026-05-31, SPEM 2026-06-30) · received by the SEC between 2026-06-26 and 2026-08-28 · written 2026-09-26. Re-measured as the next filings arrive.
The map, fund by fund
Source: each fund's Form N-PORT, rows in the point-in-time files. Country is the filing's invCountry, the issuer's country as the filer reports it; weights are shares of the fund's own investments after securities-lending collateral is removed. China is shown as three codes and their sum, for the reason given below.
| Fund | Index family | Net assets | Taiwan | Korea | India | CN | HK | KY | China, combined | Brazil |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IEMG | MSCI | $162B | 25.8 | 22.1 | 11.9 | 8.2 | 0.8 | 10.3 | 19.3 | 3.4 |
| VWO | FTSE | $160B | 28.9 | — | 16.2 | 6.8 | 20.5 | — | 27.3 | 4.6 |
| EEM | MSCI | $30B | 25.7 | 23.1 | 10.8 | 9.1 | 0.8 | 10.7 | 20.6 | 3.4 |
| AVEM | active (Avantis) | $26B | 26.7 | 22.5 | 11.8 | 14.8 | 3.0 | — | 17.8 | 3.8 |
| EMXC | MSCI ex-China | $25B | 32.3 | 29.0 | 13.6 | — | — | 1.0 | 1.0 | 4.3 |
| SPEM | S&P | $17B | 32.4 | — | 16.0 | 15.0 | 1.0 | 11.1 | 27.1 | 3.8 |
| SCHE | FTSE | $13B | 31.9 | — | 15.2 | 13.5 | 0.8 | 12.8 | 27.1 | 4.3 |
| DFEM | active (Dimensional) | $9B | 25.1 | 17.6 | 12.8 | 11.8 | 1.3 | 10.2 | 23.3 | 3.9 |
| Pooled, $441B | 27.8 | 13.0 | 13.7 | 8.2 | 8.1 | 5.6 | 21.8 | 3.9 |
Read down the Korea column first. MSCI-based funds (IEMG, EEM, EMXC) and the two active funds hold Korea at 18–29%; the FTSE-based VWO and SCHE and the S&P-based SPEM hold none. The FTSE country classification lists South Korea under Developed; MSCI's does not. The pooled Korea figure of 13.0 is therefore an average of "22" and "0", and describes no fund.
Then the China columns. The companies are largely the same across these funds — Tencent, Alibaba, Meituan, PDD, BYD — but where iShares, State Street, Schwab and Dimensional file Tencent as Cayman Islands (its place of incorporation), Vanguard files it as Hong Kong (its listing) and Avantis as China. None is wrong; invCountry is the filer's call. The consequence is that IEMG's "China" is 8.2% if you read the CN code and 19.3% if you add the three, and VWO's is 6.8% or 27.3%. This site shows the codes as filed and the sum, and does not reassign.
Seven years in two funds
| Filing period | IEMG: Taiwan | Korea | India | China (3 codes) | Brazil | VWO: Taiwan | India | China (3 codes) | Brazil | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 (Nov / Oct) | 12.4 | 12.0 | 9.6 | 30.7 | 7.4 | 13.9 | 10.5 | 33.4 | 8.3 | |
| 2020 | 13.2 | 13.3 | 9.6 | 36.6 | 5.1 | 13.4 | 9.9 | 31.5 | 4.4 | |
| 2021 | 16.0 | 12.7 | 13.1 | 30.4 | 4.2 | 16.3 | 14.9 | 32.1 | 4.4 | |
| 2022 | 14.7 | 12.2 | 15.9 | 27.3 | 5.5 | 14.5 | 19.3 | 26.6 | 7.1 | |
| 2023 | 16.3 | 12.9 | 17.3 | 25.1 | 5.6 | 16.8 | 19.5 | 29.0 | 6.0 | |
| 2024 | 18.8 | 9.8 | 21.2 | 24.5 | 3.7 | 19.9 | 22.6 | 27.1 | 4.3 | |
| 2025 | 19.4 | 12.3 | 16.8 | 26.6 | 3.7 | 22.1 | 19.1 | 30.7 | 3.8 | |
| 2026 (May / Apr) | 25.8 | 22.1 | 11.9 | 19.3 | 3.4 | 28.9 | 16.2 | 27.3 | 4.6 |
Three movements, all of them market value rather than index decisions — these funds track their indexes and the indexes weight by float-adjusted market capitalisation, so a country's share moves when its companies' value moves relative to the rest.
- Taiwan, 2019 to 2026: roughly doubled in both funds, and almost all of it is TSMC. In IEMG, TSMC is 12.5 of Taiwan's 25.8 cents; the other 333 Taiwanese positions share the rest.
- Korea in IEMG: flat for six years, then +10 points in six months. 12.3 cents in November 2025, 22.1 in May 2026. Samsung 7.5 and SK hynix 5.8 together account for 13.3 of the 22.1. The filing records the weight, not the reason; it is consistent with a rise in those two companies' market value relative to the index, and with nothing else the filing can show.
- China peaked in November 2020 at 36.6 cents of IEMG and is now 19.3; in VWO the decline is shallower, 33.4 to 27.3. The two funds follow different index rules for Chinese shares, and the filings do not say which rule accounts for the gap.
- India climbed to a fifth of both funds by late 2024 and has fallen back to 12 and 16 cents.
- Brazil halved, from 7–8 cents to 3–5.
What one dollar buys
Put the two largest funds side by side at their latest filings and the emerging-markets dollar looks like this: in IEMG, 26 cents Taiwan (12.5 of them TSMC), 22 cents Korea (13 of them Samsung and SK hynix), 19 cents China across three codes, 12 cents India, and 21 cents for the remaining thirty-six countries together. In VWO, 29 cents Taiwan, 27 China, 16 India, no Korea, and 28 for everything else. The three semiconductor companies — TSMC, Samsung, SK hynix — are 25.8% of IEMG and 37.1% of the ex-China EMXC. An emerging-markets index fund in 2026 is, to a first approximation, a semiconductor position with a China position attached, and which of the two is larger depends on whose index it tracks.
What this can and cannot tell you
- As of April–June 2026. These weights follow prices daily; the ranking of the top three countries is stable across the funds, the exact figures are not.
- Country is incorporation as filed. The China note applies in smaller measure to any company incorporated in Cayman, Bermuda or Hong Kong, of which emerging-markets indexes have many.
- Only US-registered funds file N-PORT. This is the emerging-markets exposure of US fund money, not of emerging-markets investors.
- Nothing here is a view on any country's prospects or on holding any of these funds.
To check at the next filings: whether Korea in IEMG stays above 20 cents (its jump from 12 to 22 came in a single half-year), and whether Taiwan passes 30 in VWO. Recorded in the series ledger.
Data: Taiwan · Korea · India · China · Hong Kong · Cayman Islands · IEMG · VWO · EEM · EMXC · per-fund country tables at /data/country-weights/TICKER.json.