iShares MSCI Global Silver and Metals Miners ETF

What this fund is

iShares MSCI Global Silver and Metals Miners ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker SLVP (ISIN US4642863272). 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 tracking physical commodities like gold or oil, which often move differently from shares and are used to spread risk or hedge inflation, spread broadly across markets worldwide. It passively tracks the MSCI Global Silver And Metals Miners index — mirroring that market instead of paying a manager to pick winners, which keeps costs low.

It is typically held as a diversifier — a slice that behaves differently from mainstream shares — rather than as a portfolio's main engine. Its ongoing charge (TER) is 0.39% a year — about €39 a year on a €10,000 holding, taken automatically from the fund. It holds the underlying investments directly (physical replication). Its price has swung about 55.6% over the past year — a gauge of how much the value moves, not a judgement of quality.

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.)