UBS MSCI AC Asia ex Japan SF UCITS ETF USD acc

What this fund is

UBS MSCI AC Asia ex Japan SF UCITS ETF USD acc is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from UBS, traded under the ticker UC48 (ISIN IE00B7WK2W23). 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. It follows the MSCI AC Asia ex Japan index (passive investing): it tracks the market rather than relying on a manager, keeping running costs down.

Investors often use a broad fund like this as a long-term 'core' holding — a single building block that covers much of a global portfolio in one trade. Its ongoing charge (TER) is 0.23% a year — about €23 a year on a €10,000 holding, taken automatically from the fund. Income such as dividends is automatically reinvested inside the fund (an accumulating share class), so returns compound without you doing anything. It tracks its index through a swap agreement rather than owning every holding (synthetic 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 20.9% 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 UBS.)