State Street® SPDR® S&P® International Small Cap ETF

What this fund is

State Street® SPDR® S&P® International Small Cap ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from SPDR, traded under the ticker GWX (ISIN US78463X8719). 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. It passively tracks the S&P Developed Ex-U.S. Under USD2 Billion index — mirroring that market instead of paying a manager to pick winners, which keeps costs low, and its largest holdings include AUSTRIA TECHNOLOGIE + SYSTEM, MEGA OR HOLDINGS LTD and AIXTRON SE.

Spread across roughly 2104 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 2.9%), no one position makes or breaks the fund. By industry it concentrates most in ~19.2% Industrials and ~12.8% Materials. It is commonly used to tilt a portfolio towards one market, usually alongside broader, more global funds rather than on its own. Its ongoing charge (TER) is 0.4% a year — about €40 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 16.6% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good. It launched in 2007. 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 SPDR.)