NYSE Euronext (NYSE: NYX) announced Friday that its wholly-owned subsidiary, NYSE Arca, began trading the Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Small-Cap ETF (NYSE: VSS).

VSS contains approximately 2,100 securities and will offer investors market coverage to what the Vanguard Group has identified as "a frequently overlooked area of the equity universe," and serves to complement the Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF (NYSE: VEU), which was introduced in March 2007 and holds mid- and large-cap securities. According to the VSS prospectus, the fund's annual expense ratio is 0.38%.

Seeking to track the performance of a benchmark index that measures the investment return of stocks of international small-cap companies, VSS employs a "passive management" (indexing) investment approach designed to track performance, involving a free-float-adjusted, market-capitalization-weighted index, which is designed to measure equity market performance. The Index includes approximately 3,300 stocks of companies located in 47 countries, including both developed and emerging markets.

VSS will compete with the SPDR S&P International ETF (NYSE: GWX), which has around $254 million in assets. GWX follows an index of 4,000 small cap stocks domiciled outside of the U.S. and charges annual expenses of 0.60%. GWX only contains market exposure to small caps in developed countries, whereas VSS covers small caps in both developed and emerging markets. In 2008, GWX declined by 16.71%. (.continued at http://www.financialwire.net/2009/04/07/etf-wire-newly-launched-small-cap-etf-covers-international-markets/).

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