iShares MSCI Global Semiconductors UCITS ETF

What this fund is

iShares MSCI Global Semiconductors UCITS ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker SEMI (ISIN IE000I8KRLL9). It lets you buy a basket of holdings in a single trade, spreading your money across them rather than one company. At its core it is a focused, thematic fund: it concentrates on the technology 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 follows the MSCI Global Semiconductors index (passive investing): it tracks the market rather than relying on a manager, keeping running costs down, and its largest holdings include MICRON TECHNOLOGY INC, ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES INC and TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING.

Spread across roughly 306 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 59.9%), no one position makes or breaks the fund. Its biggest country exposures are ~63.2% United States, ~14% Taiwan and ~7.7% Japan. Its heaviest sectors are ~99.8% Technology and ~0.2% 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 0.35% a year — about €35 a year on a €10,000 holding, taken automatically from the fund.

It is an accumulating share class: dividends are rolled straight back in, compounding your returns rather than landing in your account as cash. 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. Its price has swung about 36.3% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good. It launched in 2021. 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.)