iShares MSCI Japan Small-Cap ETF

iShares MSCI Japan Small-Cap ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker SCJ (ISIN US4642865822). 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 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. 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 0.5% a year — about €50 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 16.8% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good. It launched in 2007. 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.)