iShares Core 30/70 Conservative Allocation ETF

What this fund is

iShares Core 30/70 Conservative Allocation ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker AOK (ISIN US4642898831). 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 a ready-made mix of shares, bonds and sometimes other assets in a single fund, so the balance is managed for you, 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 0.2% a year — about €20 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 6% over the past year — a gauge of how much the value moves, not a judgement of quality. It launched in 2008. 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.)