iShares MSCI World Materials Sector Advanced UCITS ETF

What this fund is

iShares MSCI World Materials Sector Advanced UCITS ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker WSMT (ISIN IE0004QLESG4). One trade buys a whole basket of holdings, so your money is spread out instead of riding on a single company. At its core it is a focused, thematic fund: it concentrates on the materials part of the market, so it lives or dies by that one area rather than the economy as a whole. Underneath, it is about owning small slices of companies, so you share in their growth when they do well — and their falls when they don't. It passively tracks the MSCI World index — mirroring that market instead of paying a manager to pick winners, which keeps costs low, and its largest holdings include LINDE PLC, BHP GROUP LTD and ECOLAB INC.

It holds around 106 positions (the ten largest ≈ 39.6%), spreading risk so no single holding decides your outcome. By geography it is weighted towards ~40.4% United States, ~15% Canada and ~10.6% Australia. Its heaviest sectors are ~99.5% Materials and ~0.5% Other. A focused fund like this is typically held as a smaller 'satellite' position around a broader core — a way to lean into one theme, not usually a portfolio's only holding. Its ongoing charge (TER) is 0.18% a year — about €18 a year on a €10,000 holding, taken automatically from the fund.

Income such as dividends is automatically reinvested inside the fund (an accumulating share class), so returns compound without you doing anything. It holds the underlying investments directly (physical replication); it is domiciled in Ireland and UCITS-regulated, a European standard built to protect everyday investors and trades in USD. It launched in 2026. As with any investment, its value can go down as well as up, and past performance is not a guide to future results. (Fund data sourced from iShares.)