"I don't think any changes in August will be quite as dramatic regarding Asia as some of the changes made in May were very major," John Fildes, MSCI executive director and head of MSCI Asia, said in an interview.

MSCI made major changes to its Asian weightings in May.

After two years of exclusion, Malaysia was reinstated by MSCI giving it about a 10 percent weighting in its Asian indices.

It also increased the weighting of Taiwan and added China's red chip stocks to China's weighting. The addition of the red chip stocks increased China's weighting to over nine percent.

At the same time MSCI cut Thailand's weighting from more than four percent, a move which partly reflected but also encouraged an exodus of foreigners from the Thai bourse, analysts said.

By the end of May, Thailand's weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Free stood at 2.1 percent. It had a 3.7 percent weighting in the MSCI All Countries Far East Free ex-Japan, and a 2.4 percent weighting in the MSCI Asia Pacific Free ex-Japan index.

"There are no changes of that ilk potentially at the moment. In August, some countries may be rebalanced, which might have a minor impact on the overall weightings," Fildes said.

Quantitative assessments
"There would be no pro-active move to downweight or upweight any country on a qualitative basis. It (will be) purely a quantitative results calculation on a market capitalisation basis."

Fildes said the changes made to each country and their indices were not based on qualitative analysis but were the result of lower market capitalisation of various countries.

May's changes had been wide-reaching.

"Obviously, that had a knock on effect on every other market. So all of the factors added together meant that Thailand's weight in the overall index went down. It was a purely quantitative result rather than any qualitative decision."

Asked if Thailand's weighting would be lowered further, Fildes said weightings would depend upon the market capitalisation of each country's market.

"Thailand's market has been one of the worst performing markets in Asia this year, so its market capitalisation has gone down," he said.

As of June 15, Thailand's weightings had been reduced again.

He said Thailand's weighting was now 1.79 percent in the MSCI Emerging Markets Free index, 2.66 percent in the All Countries Far East Free ex-Japan index and 1.87 percent in the Asia Pacific Free ex-Japan index, he said.

Fildes rejected criticism MSCI weightings did not reflect changes such as the greater importance of technology stocks in Thailand, saying it was not MSCI's job to follow trends.

"We are just providing the benchmark and our aim is to get as close as possible...and not to overweight or underweight anything just because it is in vogue," he said.