iShares Global Materials ETF

What this fund is

iShares Global Materials ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker MXI (ISIN US4642886950). One trade buys a whole basket of holdings, so your money is spread out instead of riding on a single 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 broadly across markets worldwide.

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 0.39% 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 20.5% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good. It launched in 2006. 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.)