iShares MSCI Global Gold Miners ETF

What this fund is

iShares MSCI Global Gold Miners ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker RING (ISIN US46434G8556). 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 tracking physical commodities like gold or oil, which often move differently from shares and are used to spread risk or hedge inflation, spread broadly across markets worldwide. It follows the MSCI Global Gold Miners index (passive investing): it tracks the market rather than relying on a manager, keeping running costs down.

It is typically held as a diversifier — a slice that behaves differently from mainstream shares — rather than as a portfolio's main engine. 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 48.1% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good.

It launched in 2012. 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.)