iShares Automation & Robotics UCITS ETF

What this fund is

iShares Automation & Robotics UCITS ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker RBOD (ISIN IE00BYWZ0333). In a single purchase you get a diversified basket of holdings rather than a stake in just one business. At its core it is a focused, thematic fund: it concentrates on the technology part of the market, so it lives or dies by that one area rather than the economy as a whole. Underneath, 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. Its largest holdings include ASTERA LABS INC, INTEL CORPORATION and ADVANTEST CORP.

It holds around 189 positions (the ten largest ≈ 30.4%), spreading risk so no single holding decides your outcome. Its biggest country exposures are ~61.1% United States, ~14.5% Japan and ~6.8% Germany. By industry it concentrates most in ~70.6% Technology and ~23.8% Industrials. A focused fund like this is typically held as a smaller 'satellite' position around a broader core — a way to lean into one theme, not usually a portfolio's only holding. Its ongoing charge (TER) is 0.4% a year — about €40 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 0.21% (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 2017. As with any investment, its value can go down as well as up, and past performance is not a guide to future results. (Fund data sourced from iShares.)