Index weighting makes Saudi Arabia hard to ignore

While a number of managers already have exposure to Saudi Arabia, they expect the country will receive more attention following its promotion by MSCI Inc. to its Emerging Markets index. 

The country's expected 2.6% weighting in the MSCI EMI "is big enough to make sure most funds don't ignore Saudi as they did Pakistan," which only accounts for 10 basis points of the index, said Dominic Bokor-Ingram, portfolio adviser in London. "So in theory there could be some rebalancing, which takes money out of the other emerging markets to put into Saudi, but the impact will be very small."