iShares MSCI AC Far East ex-Japan Small Cap UCITS ETF

What this fund is

iShares MSCI AC Far East ex-Japan Small Cap UCITS ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker ISFE (ISIN IE00B2QWDR12). 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. Rather than a manager picking stocks, it simply replicates the MSCI Ac Far East Ex-japan Small Cap index — the passive, low-cost approach, and its largest holdings include WINBOND ELECTRONICS CORP, NANYA TECHNOLOGY CORP and TAIWAN UNION TECHNOLOGY CORP. Spread across roughly 1166 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 9.5%), no one position makes or breaks the fund.

By geography it is weighted towards ~43% Taiwan, ~20.8% Korea (South) and ~13.2% China. By industry it concentrates most in ~38.2% Technology and ~16.7% Industrials. 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 0.74% a year — about €74 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 1.900138% (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. It launched in 2008. 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.)