UBS Core MSCI Japan UCITS ETF JPY acc

What this fund is

UBS Core MSCI Japan UCITS ETF JPY acc is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from UBS, traded under the ticker 0DZW (ISIN LU0950671825). 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 passively tracks the MSCI Japan index — mirroring that market instead of paying a manager to pick winners, which keeps costs low, and its largest holdings include MITSUBISHI UFJ FINANCIAL GRO, TOKYO ELECTRON LTD and TOYOTA MOTOR CORP. By geography it is weighted towards ~29.1% Japan.

Its heaviest sectors are ~9.5% Financials and ~8.7% Technology. 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 0.12% a year — about €12 a year on a €10,000 holding, taken automatically from the fund. It is an accumulating share class: dividends are rolled straight back in, compounding your returns rather than landing in your account as cash. It holds the underlying investments directly (physical replication); it is domiciled in Luxembourg and UCITS-regulated, a European standard built to protect everyday investors and trades in JPY.

Its price has swung about 20.4% over the past year — a gauge of how much the value moves, not a judgement of quality. 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 UBS.)