State Street® SPDR® S&P® Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF

What this fund is

State Street® SPDR® S&P® Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from SPDR, traded under the ticker XOP (ISIN US78468R5569). 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 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. Rather than a manager picking stocks, it simply replicates the S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production Select Industry Index index — the passive, low-cost approach, and its largest holdings include PBF ENERGY INC CLASS A, TEXAS PACIFIC LAND CORP and DELEK US HOLDINGS INC.

With about 54 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 28.4%), your money is diversified rather than concentrated in a handful of names. Its heaviest sectors are ~90.4% 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 28% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good. It launched in 2006. 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.)