Schwab International Dividend Equity ETF

What this fund is

Schwab International Dividend Equity ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from Schwab, traded under the ticker SCHY (ISIN US8085246721). 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. Its largest holdings include WESFARMERS LTD, UNILEVER PLC and GLAXOSMITHKLINE.

With about 134 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 40.5%), your money is diversified rather than concentrated in a handful of names. Its biggest country exposures are ~14.2% GB, ~13.6% FR and ~10.1% AU. By industry it concentrates most in ~15.7% Financials and ~15.4% Consumer Staples. 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 0.08% a year — about €8 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 12.2% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good. 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 Schwab.)