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Find an ETF

How to read an ETF factsheet (and KID) in 2 minutes

Part of Choosing & comparing

An ETF factsheet looks dense, but only a handful of lines really tell you what you are looking at. Here they are.

Start with the cost

The first number to find is the The yearly running cost of the fund, shown as a % of your money. Lower is cheaper. More → — the running cost as a percent of your money. For a plain index ETF it is usually a fraction of a percent. The KID also shows costs as a euro figure on an example amount, which makes the drag easier to picture over time.

What it holds, and how

Next: which The published list of investments (the “index”) the fund aims to copy, such as the MSCI World. More → the fund copies (its target list — say, a world or S&P 500 index), and how it holds it — full How the fund copies its index: by buying the shares directly (physical) or using a swap contract (synthetic). More → , a representative sample, or a synthetic swap. Together these tell you what you are actually holding and how faithfully it should track.

The index line tells you roughly how many companies are inside — often hundreds.

Size, home and dividends

Three more lines round it out: the How much money is invested in the fund. Bigger funds are usually cheaper to run and easy to trade. More → (bigger funds are usually cheaper to run and easier to trade); the The country where the fund is legally based, which affects its tax treatment and rules. More → (its home country, in the first two letters of the ISIN); and whether it is The fund pays dividends out to you as cash, usually a few times a year. More → — reinvesting dividends or paying them out as cash.

The six-field read, one field at a time

  1. Cost

    Find the The yearly running cost of the fund, shown as a % of your money. Lower is cheaper. More → — the yearly fee as a percentage. For a plain index ETF it is usually a fraction of a percent. The KID also shows costs as a euro figure on an example amount, which makes the drag easier to picture over time.

  2. Index

    Check which index the fund copies — its target list. This tells you which asset class and market you are actually tracking.

  3. How it is built

    Note whether the fund uses full How the fund copies its index: by buying the shares directly (physical) or using a swap contract (synthetic). More → , a representative sample, or a synthetic swap. Together with the index, this tells you how faithfully it tracks.

  4. Size

    Bigger funds are generally cheaper to run, easier to trade, and less likely to close. Fund size is listed on every factsheet.

  5. Home country

    The The country where the fund is legally based, which affects its tax treatment and rules. More → — encoded in the first two letters of the A 12-character international code that uniquely identifies this fund share class. More → — affects the tax treatment of dividends paid by the underlying shares.

  6. Accumulating or distributing

    An The fund automatically reinvests dividends back into itself, so your holding grows without cash payouts. More → fund reinvests dividends automatically; a The fund pays dividends out to you as cash, usually a few times a year. More → one pays them out as cash. The factsheet states which it is.

The two-minute checklist

So the quick read is: cost (TER + example costs), index (what it tracks), how it’s built (physical or synthetic), size, home country, and dividends (accumulating or distributing). Six lines, and you understand the fund — without anyone telling you what to do with it.

🤔 On a factsheet, the line that tells you the fund’s yearly running cost is the…

Common questions

What is the difference between a factsheet and a KID?
A factsheet is the issuer’s one-page data-and-marketing summary; the KID (key information document) is a standardised, regulated sheet with costs, risk and scenarios. They overlap a lot; the KID is the one designed for comparing funds on the same terms.
Is the risk indicator a score of how good the fund is?
No. It is a rough 1–7 scale of how much the value tends to move, not a quality rating or a prediction. A higher number means bumpier, not worse.