iShares $ Treasury Bond 7-10yr UCITS ETF

What this fund is

iShares $ Treasury Bond 7-10yr UCITS ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker IBTM (ISIN IE00B1FZS798). In a single purchase you get a diversified basket of holdings rather than a stake in just one business. 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. With about 20 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 87.7%), your money is diversified rather than concentrated in a handful of names.

Its biggest country exposures are ~100.2% United States. Its heaviest sectors are ~100% Government and ~0.2% 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. Income such as dividends is paid out to you as cash (a distributing share class), and over the last year it paid out roughly 6.11% (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 8.8% over the past year — a gauge of how much the value moves, not a judgement of quality. It launched in 2006. Like any investment, it can lose value as well as gain, and what it did before does not predict what it will do next. (Fund data sourced from iShares.)