Vanguard Total International Bond ETF

What this fund is

Vanguard Total International Bond ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from Vanguard, traded under the ticker BNDX (ISIN US92203J4076). 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 lending to governments and companies in return for regular interest, which tends to be steadier than shares but grows more slowly, spread broadly across markets worldwide. Rather than a manager picking stocks, it simply replicates the Bloomberg Global Aggregate ex-USD Float Adjusted RIC Capped Index Hedged index — the passive, low-cost approach, and its largest holdings include United Kingdom Gilt, French Republic Government Bond OAT and French Republic Government Bond OAT.

With about 6778 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 3.4%), your money is diversified rather than concentrated in a handful of names. Its biggest country exposures are ~10.7% France, ~9.9% Japan and ~7.9% Germany. Its heaviest sectors are ~73.6% Government and ~9% Financials. 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 0.07% a year — about €7 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 3.5% 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 Vanguard.)