iShares S&P Small-Cap 600 Value ETF

What this fund is

iShares S&P Small-Cap 600 Value ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker IJS (ISIN US4642878791). 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 follows the S&P Small-cap 600 Value index (passive investing): it tracks the market rather than relying on a manager, keeping running costs down.

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 0.18% a year — about €18 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 18.1% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good.

It launched in 2000. 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.)