iShares MSCI Global Sustainable Development Goals ETF

What this fund is

iShares MSCI Global Sustainable Development Goals ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from iShares, traded under the ticker SDG (ISIN US46435G5320). 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 broadly across markets worldwide. It follows the MSCI Global Sustainable Development Goals 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 0.5% a year — about €50 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 14.9% over the past year — a gauge of how much the value moves, not a judgement of quality.

It launched in 2016. 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.)