iShares J.P. Morgan $ EM Corp Bond UCITS ETF

What this fund is

iShares J.P. Morgan $ EM Corp Bond UCITS ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker EMCR (ISIN IE00B6TLBW47). 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 DIGICEL INTERNATIONAL FINANCE LTD RegS, SANDS CHINA LTD and ECOPETROL SA.

It holds around 1280 positions (the ten largest ≈ 3.1%), spreading risk so no single holding decides your outcome. By geography it is weighted towards ~6.3% Saudi Arabia, ~6.2% China and ~6% Hong Kong. Its heaviest sectors are ~42.9% Industrials and ~26.1% Government. 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 0.5% a year — about €50 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 10.9% (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 11.3% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good. It launched in 2012. 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.)