State Street® SPDR® Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF

What this fund is

State Street® SPDR® Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from SPDR, traded under the ticker BIL (ISIN US78468R6633). 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 very short-term, cash-like instruments, aimed at protecting your money and earning a little interest rather than growing it, spread across its target market. It follows the Bloomberg 1-3 Month U.S.

Treasury Bill Index index (passive investing): it tracks the market rather than relying on a manager, keeping running costs down, and its largest holdings include TREASURY BILL 08/26 0.00000, TREASURY BILL 09/26 0.00000 and TREASURY BILL 08/26 0.00000. With about 19 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 74.8%), your money is diversified rather than concentrated in a handful of names. Funds like this are often used as the steadier, lower-swing part of a portfolio — the ballast that cushions the ups and downs of shares. Its ongoing charge (TER) is 0.1353% a year — about €14 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 1.1% over the past year — a gauge of how much the value moves, not a judgement of quality. 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.)