iShares MSCI EM Small Cap UCITS ETF

What this fund is

iShares MSCI EM Small Cap UCITS ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker IEMS (ISIN IE00B3F81G20). It lets you buy a basket of holdings in a single trade, spreading your money across them rather than one company. 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 Emerging Markets index — the passive, low-cost approach, and its largest holdings include WINBOND ELECTRONICS CORP, NANYA TECHNOLOGY CORP and TAIWAN UNION TECHNOLOGY CORP. With about 1926 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 6.3%), your money is diversified rather than concentrated in a handful of names.

Its biggest country exposures are ~28.6% Taiwan, ~20.7% India and ~13.8% Korea (South). By industry it concentrates most in ~26.2% 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. 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 1.5% (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 2009. 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.)