iShares MSCI Intl Value Factor ETF

What this fund is

iShares MSCI Intl Value Factor ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker IVLU (ISIN US46435G4091). 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 across its target market. Rather than a manager picking stocks, it simply replicates the MSCI Intl Value Factor index — the passive, low-cost approach.

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 0.31% a year — about €31 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 15.8% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good.

It launched in 2015. 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.)