iShares Biotechnology ETF

What this fund is

iShares Biotechnology ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker IBB (ISIN US4642875565). 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.

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 0.44% a year — about €44 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 20.6% over the past year — a gauge of how much the value moves, not a judgement of quality. It launched in 2001. 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.)