iShares $ Treasury Bond 1-3yr UCITS ETF

What this fund is

iShares $ Treasury Bond 1-3yr UCITS ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker IDBT (ISIN IE00B14X4S71). One trade buys a whole basket of holdings, so your money is spread out instead of riding on a single company. In plain terms it is about lending to governments and companies in return for regular interest, which tends to be steadier than shares but grows more slowly, spread across its target market. Its largest holdings include TREASURY NOTE, TREASURY NOTE and TREASURY NOTE. Spread across roughly 97 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 15%), no one position makes or breaks the fund.

Its biggest country exposures are ~100% United States and ~0% Switzerland. Its heaviest sectors are ~99.9% Government and ~0.1% Other. Funds like this are often used as the steadier, lower-swing part of a portfolio — the ballast that cushions the ups and downs of shares. Its ongoing charge (TER) is 0.07% a year — about €7 a year on a €10,000 holding, taken automatically from the fund. It is a distributing share class — dividends are paid to you as cash rather than reinvested, and over the last year it paid out roughly 3.98% (its trailing yield).

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 3.8% over the past year — a gauge of how much the value moves, not a judgement of quality. It launched in 2006. 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.)