State Street® SPDR® S&P® Metals & Mining ETF

What this fund is

State Street® SPDR® S&P® Metals & Mining ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from SPDR, traded under the ticker XME (ISIN US78464A7550). 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 tracking physical commodities like gold or oil, which often move differently from shares and are used to spread risk or hedge inflation, spread across its target market. It passively tracks the S&P Metals & Mining Select Industry Index index — mirroring that market instead of paying a manager to pick winners, which keeps costs low, and its largest holdings include HECLA MINING CO, URANIUM ENERGY CORP and COEUR MINING INC.

Spread across roughly 41 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 44.8%), no one position makes or breaks the fund. Its heaviest sectors are ~71.7% Materials and ~16.5% Energy. 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 0.35% a year — about €35 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 36.3% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good. It launched in 2006. 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.)