iShares MSCI EM Latin America UCITS ETF

What this fund is

iShares MSCI EM Latin America UCITS ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker LTAM (ISIN IE00B27YCK28). 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 owning small slices of companies, so you share in their growth when they do well — and their falls when they don't, spread across its target market. It follows the MSCI Emerging Markets index (passive investing): it tracks the market rather than relying on a manager, keeping running costs down, and its largest holdings include ISHARES MSCI BRAZIL UCITS ET USDHA, CIA VALE DO RIO DOCE SH and NU HOLDINGS CLASS A. It holds around 98 positions (the ten largest ≈ 43.9%), spreading risk so no single holding decides your outcome.

Geographically it leans ~52.3% Brazil, ~25.5% Mexico and ~7.9% Germany. Its heaviest sectors are ~39.4% Financials and ~18.8% Materials. Funds like this are commonly chosen by investors who want a regular cash income stream rather than reinvesting everything for growth. Its ongoing charge (TER) is 0.2% a year — about €20 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 3.51% (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 20.2% over the past year — a gauge of how much the value moves, not a judgement of quality. It launched in 2007. 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.)