State Street® Real Estate Select Sector SPDR® ETF

What this fund is

State Street® Real Estate Select Sector SPDR® ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from SPDR, traded under the ticker XLRE (ISIN US81369Y8600). 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 owning listed property companies (REITs), which earn rent from buildings and usually pass much of it on to investors, spread across its target market. It follows the Real Estate Select Sector Index index (passive investing): it tracks the market rather than relying on a manager, keeping running costs down, and its largest holdings include WELLTOWER INC, PROLOGIS INC and EQUINIX INC.

With about 34 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 59.7%), your money is diversified rather than concentrated in a handful of names. Its heaviest sectors are ~76.4% Real Estate and ~10.1% Corporate. 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 0.08% 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 14.1% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good. It launched in 2015. 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.)