State Street® SPDR® Portfolio Emerging Markets ETF

What this fund is

State Street® SPDR® Portfolio Emerging Markets ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from SPDR, traded under the ticker SPEM (ISIN US78463X5095). 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 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 S&P Emerging BMI Index index — the passive, low-cost approach, and its largest holdings include TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFAC, TENCENT HOLDINGS LTD and MEDIATEK INC.

With about 3003 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 26.6%), your money is diversified rather than concentrated in a handful of names. By industry it concentrates most in ~27.9% Technology and ~14% Financials. 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 0.07% a year — about €7 a year on a €10,000 holding, taken automatically from the fund.

It holds the underlying investments directly (physical replication); it is domiciled in the United States and trades in USD. Its price has swung about 17% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good. It launched in 2007. 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 SPDR.)