Glossary

The fund automatically reinvests dividends back into itself, so your holding grows without cash payouts.

Rolling the dividends straight back in means your money compounds automatically, with nothing for you to reinvest by hand. The flip side is there is no cash income; the growth simply shows up as a higher fund value. Note that reinvested dividends can still be taxable in some countries even though you never receive the cash — the rules depend on where you live.

Related Distributing Total Return

📖 Learn more What is an ETF? → Accumulating vs distributing ETFs: what is the difference? →

Loans to governments or companies that pay interest.

A bond is essentially an IOU: you lend money to a government or company, and they pay you regular interest and, at the end, your money back. Bonds are generally steadier than shares, which is why many people hold some for balance — but they are not risk-free. Their price falls when interest rates rise, and a borrower can occasionally fail to pay.

Related Equity

📖 Learn more Bond ETFs explained → Stocks vs bonds →

Return compared with the worst drop over the period. Higher means better reward for the pain endured.

It weighs the return against the worst peak-to-trough fall over the period, so it asks whether the reward justified the deepest gut-punch along the way. A higher number means you were paid better for the pain you had to sit through. It is most telling over longer windows that actually contain a proper downturn.

Related Max Drawdown Sharpe

📖 Learn more Sharpe, Sortino and Calmar side by side →

How far this fund’s return sits above or below the average for similar funds — positive means it beat the category average, negative means it lagged.

The “category” is the closest peer group we can identify from strategy and asset class, not an official index segment, so treat this as a comparison you can sanity-check rather than a number to trust blindly. Reading the diff alongside the fund’s own absolute return — not the delta on its own — gives the fairer picture. A fund can lag the category average and still be a sound choice if the category itself is not the right fit for you.

Related Peer Percentile Tilt Vs World

📖 Learn more How "cheaper than 80% of similar ETFs" is actually calculated →

Physical goods like gold or oil (usually tracked through contracts, not by storing the goods).

Commodities are raw physical goods — gold, oil, industrial metals, farm products. ETFs usually track them through contracts or, for gold, by holding the metal, rather than by literally storing barrels of oil. They behave differently from shares and pay no dividends, so they are used more for spreading risk than for steady income.

Related Real Estate Crypto

📖 Learn more ETF vs ETC → Gold ETFs (well, ETCs) →

How much of the fund sits in its biggest holdings. A high number means a few names drive most of the result.

It tells you how much of the fund rides on its biggest few holdings — a high number means a handful of names largely drive the result, for better or worse. A very spread-out fund is steadier, because no single company can sink it; a concentrated one moves more with its top names. It is a quick read on how “few baskets” a fund is.

Related Holdings Sector

📖 Learn more ETF vs individual stocks: a basket or single names? → Is a ‘world’ ETF actually diversified? →

Where in the world the fund’s money is invested, based on the country each holding is in.

This breaks the fund down by where its holdings are based, so you can see how much rides on any one country. A world fund is spread across many; a single-country fund puts everything into one economy and currency. Worth knowing: it reflects where companies are listed or headquartered, which is not always where they actually earn their money.

Related Holdings Sector

Whether the bonds inside are higher-rated (“Investment Grade”), lower-rated and higher-yielding (“High Yield”), or “Not Rated” because we found no clear signal.

We work this out from the fund’s name and the index it tracks, not from a rating agency’s fund-level opinion or a holding-by-holding read of every bond inside. “Not Rated” means we could not find a signal — it does not mean the underlying bonds carry no credit rating at all. Investment Grade bonds are generally steadier but pay less; High Yield pays more to compensate for a higher chance a borrower struggles to pay.

Related Duration Band Bond

📖 Learn more Choosing a bond ETF → Building a systematic ETF screen →

Crypto assets like bitcoin, held through an exchange-traded product (an ETP) rather than a fund.

In Europe you cannot hold crypto inside a normal diversified fund, so it arrives as an exchange-traded product (ETP) — a note that tracks a coin’s price, usually backed by the coin held in storage. It behaves very differently from shares or bonds: it pays no dividends and has famously large price swings, which is why it is usually discussed as a small, high-risk slice rather than a core holding.

Related Commodity

How often the fund pays out its dividends — for example monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or once a year.

This is purely a timing detail set by the fund, not a signal about quality or size — accumulating funds do not pay out at all, and among distributing funds, more frequent payouts are not automatically “better”, just a different cash-flow rhythm. It matters most if you are combining several funds to build a steadier month-to-month income, since payers on different schedules can smooth out the calendar. Payout dates can shift slightly fund to fund even within the same stated frequency.

Related Distributing Accumulating

The fund pays dividends out to you as cash, usually a few times a year.

You get the dividends as cash you can spend or move elsewhere, which some people like for a sense of income. If you would rather it compounded, you buy more units yourself — it will not reinvest on its own the way an accumulating version does. The same fund is often sold in both versions; what it holds underneath is identical.

Related Accumulating

📖 Learn more Accumulating vs distributing ETFs: what is the difference? → How to read an ETF factsheet (and KID) in 2 minutes →

The country where the fund is legally based, which affects its tax treatment and rules.

It is usually shown by the first two letters of the ISIN — Ireland (IE) and Luxembourg (LU) are the most common homes for European ETFs. The domicile sets which tax treaties apply to the dividends the fund collects and which investor-protection rules it follows. It is about where the fund itself is based, not where you live or where the companies it holds are.

Related ISIN Fund Currency

📖 Learn more Are ETFs safe for beginners? → What is a UCITS ETF? →

How much the fund swings, counting only the down moves — a measure of bad volatility.

Ordinary volatility counts every wobble, up or down; downside deviation counts only the falls, since that is the part that actually worries people. A lower figure means the fund’s bad days were milder or rarer. It is the risk measure that sits underneath the Sortino ratio.

Related Sortino Volatility

📖 Learn more Sharpe, Sortino and Calmar side by side →

How sensitive the bond fund’s price is to interest-rate changes, from Ultra-short (barely moves) to Long (moves the most) — shorter tends to wobble less when rates shift.

Duration is a bond fund’s sensitivity to interest rates: the longer it is, the more the price swings — up or down — when rates move. We group funds into four bands (Ultra-short → Short → Intermediate → Long) from the maturities of what they hold, rather than showing a precise number, to keep the read simple. It describes a trade-off, not a ranking — shorter is not “better”, it just means calmer rate-sensitivity in exchange for typically less yield.

Related Credit Quality Bond

📖 Learn more Choosing a bond ETF →

If every holding were weighted equally, this is how many positions the fund would effectively behave like. It is lower than the real holdings count when the biggest few names dominate.

A fund can list a thousand holdings but still behave like far fewer if a handful of giant names dominate the top. This number estimates how many equally-weighted positions the fund effectively acts like — a lower figure than the headline count means more concentration. It is a quick sense-check of how spread-out a fund really is, beyond just counting names.

Related Concentration Holdings

Shares in companies (stocks).

When you own equity you own a genuine slice of the business — its profits and its setbacks. Shares can pay you income as dividends and can grow or shrink in value as the company does. Over long periods shares have tended to grow more than cash or bonds, in exchange for a bumpier ride along the way.

Related Bond Region

📖 Learn more Can You Lose Money in an ETF? → Are ETFs safe for beginners? →

The currency the fund reports in. You can often buy it in another currency; that does not change what it holds.

This is just the currency the fund keeps its books in — it does not decide your actual currency risk. What matters for that is the currencies of the things the fund holds. The same fund often trades in several currencies, so buying the euro line of a fund full of US shares still leaves you exposed to the US dollar underneath.

Related Domicile

📖 Learn more Currency risk in ETFs (and what “hedged” means) → Currency-hedged or not? →

How much money is invested in the fund. Bigger funds are usually cheaper to run and easy to trade.

A larger fund is usually cheaper to run and easier to buy and sell without nudging the price, and it is less likely to be closed for being uneconomic. Very small funds are not automatically bad, but they carry a slightly higher chance of being merged or wound up. Size is one signal of a fund’s health, not a measure of how good its returns will be.

Related TER

📖 Learn more What fund fees really cost you over 30 years → Are ETFs safe for beginners? →

The share of months where the fund finished higher than it started.

It is simply the share of months that finished higher than they began — a rough feel for how often the fund has been in a good mood. A high hit rate does not promise high returns (a few big down months can still dominate), but it hints at a steadier month-to-month experience. Read it alongside the size of the swings, not on its own.

Related Volatility Total Return

The individual investments the fund owns. The largest few are shown; full lists update less often.

These are the actual investments the fund owns — we show the largest handful, since those drive most of the result, with the full list to download where the fund publishes it. Broad index funds can hold hundreds or thousands of positions, so no single name dominates. Full holdings are usually published less often than prices, so the list can lag.

Related Concentration Sector

📖 Learn more Can You Lose Money in an ETF? → Are ETFs safe for beginners? →

The published list of investments (the “index”) the fund aims to copy, such as the MSCI World.

The index is the published recipe the fund follows — the list of what to hold and in what proportion, set by a provider like MSCI or FTSE. The fund’s job is to copy that list as closely and cheaply as it can, not to beat it. Two funds on the same index should hold almost the same things, so the real differences come down to cost and how tightly each one tracks.

Related Replication Total Return

📖 Learn more ETF vs Mutual Fund: What Is the Difference? → What does diversification actually mean? →

Whether the bonds’ payouts move with inflation (“linkers”/TIPS) or pay a fixed amount regardless of inflation (“nominal” bonds).

An inflation-linked bond adjusts its interest and/or principal as prices rise, so it is built to hold its real (after-inflation) value; a nominal bond simply pays what it promised on day one, and inflation quietly erodes what that is worth over time. This is a structural fact about the bond, not a forecast of whether inflation will actually rise or fall from here. Most bond funds hold nominal bonds by default; inflation-linked funds are a distinct, smaller category built specifically around this feature.

Related Bond Duration Band

📖 Learn more Choosing a bond ETF →

A 12-character international code that uniquely identifies this fund share class.

It always begins with a two-letter country code (the fund’s home) and ten more characters, and it never changes. Because the same strategy can trade on several exchanges and in several currencies, the ISIN is the dependable way to be sure you have exactly the right share class. Tickers can differ by exchange or be reused; the ISIN does not.

Related Domicile

📖 Learn more What is an ETF? → How do you actually buy an ETF? →

The biggest fall from a peak over the period shown.

It is the worst peak-to-trough fall over the period — how far down you would have been if you had bought at the very top and held through the low. It is a gut-check for the pain a fund has actually put holders through, not a forecast of the next drop. A deeper past drawdown usually points to a bumpier fund.

Related Volatility Calmar

📖 Learn more Leveraged & inverse ETFs → When should you sell an ETF? →

The fund does a bit of both — some dividends paid out as cash, some reinvested.

A minority of funds split the difference — paying part of the income out as cash and reinvesting the rest inside the fund. It is less common than the two clean options and can make the tax and record-keeping a little fiddlier. If you have a strong preference for either cash income or automatic compounding, a purely distributing or accumulating version is usually simpler.

Related Accumulating Distributing

Very short-term, low-risk loans — used to park cash rather than to grow it.

Money-market funds hold very short-term, high-quality loans, so their value barely moves — the job is to protect cash and earn a little, not to grow it. People use them to park money they will need soon, or as a calm holding pen between decisions. Returns are modest and not guaranteed, but the ride is about as smooth as investing gets.

Related Bond

📖 Learn more Money-market ETFs vs a savings account →

A mix of different types in one fund, such as shares and bonds together.

A multi-asset fund blends different types — commonly shares and bonds — inside a single holding, and keeps that blend in balance for you. It is a ready-made portfolio in one line, which is why beginners often reach for one: less to choose, nothing to rebalance by hand. The trade-off is less control over the exact mix than holding the pieces separately.

Related Equity Bond

📖 Learn more What is rebalancing — and do beginners need to bother? → Model portfolios for beginners →

Performance measured from the fund’s official daily value (its “net asset value”), rather than its market price.

A fund has two prices: the market price it trades at on the exchange minute to minute, and its net asset value (NAV) — the official worth of everything it holds, struck once a day. NAV return measures performance from that official value, so it strips out the tiny moment-to-moment gap between the market price and what the fund is really worth underneath.

Related Total Return Price Return

📖 Learn more ETF vs Mutual Fund: What Is the Difference? → What happens if an ETF closes down? →

A catch-all for funds that do not fit the main asset classes.

Some funds hold a blend or a niche exposure that does not sit cleanly under shares, bonds, property, commodities or cash. Rather than force a wrong label onto them, they are grouped as “Other” — an honest “does not fit one box”, not a judgement on quality. Check what the fund actually holds to understand it.

Related Multi Asset

How this fund ranks against other funds that follow a similar strategy — “cheaper than 80%” means 4 out of 5 similar funds cost more than this one.

Rather than judge a fund on its own, we line it up against the closest group of comparable funds we can identify — same broad strategy, not the whole market — and show where it sits. A high percentile is a relative read (“better than most peers”), not a guarantee of future results, and for a niche strategy the peer group can be small, which makes any single percentile less solid. Use it alongside the fund’s own numbers, not instead of them.

Related Category Return Diff TER

📖 Learn more How "cheaper than 80% of similar ETFs" is actually calculated →

The fund actually buys every share in the index it tracks (full replication).

Owning every holding keeps things transparent — what is in the index is what the fund actually owns. It can be a touch costlier to run for indexes with thousands of tiny positions, since the fund has to buy and maintain them all. There is no swap bank involved, so there is no extra “what if the partner fails” question to weigh.

Related Replication Synthetic

📖 Learn more Physical vs Synthetic ETFs: What’s the Difference? → Fund structure for comparison shoppers →

The fund buys a representative sample of the index rather than every single holding.

Holding a well-chosen sample lets the fund track a huge or awkward index without owning every last tiny position, which can keep costs down. The trade-off is it can drift a little further from the index than a full-replication version. It still owns real shares — just not every single name on the list.

Related Physical Full Replication

Performance from price change only, excluding dividends — so it looks lower than total return.

Because it leaves dividends out, it understates what a holder actually earned — the cash paid out is missing from the line. It can make a distributing fund look weaker than an accumulating one holding the very same things. For a true comparison, reach for total return, which folds the dividends back in.

Related Total Return

The main stock-exchange listing we use as the reference for this fund. The very same fund often trades on several exchanges in different currencies — they are the same fund underneath.

The very same fund often trades on several exchanges and in several currencies — London, Frankfurt, Milan — but it is one fund underneath, with one ISIN. We pick one listing as the reference for the figures we show. Which listing you actually buy can affect the trading currency and costs, but not what the fund holds.

Related ISIN Fund Currency

Property companies and real-estate investment trusts (REITs).

These funds hold listed property companies and REITs — businesses that own and rent out buildings — rather than bricks you could touch. They can pay a decent income and move differently from ordinary shares, though they still trade like shares and fall in bad markets. It is a way to get some property exposure without buying a building yourself.

Related Equity Commodity

📖 Learn more Real-estate (REIT) ETFs →

The part of the world the fund invests in — for example world, US, Europe or emerging markets.

A region tells you where the fund puts your money to work — from the whole world, to a single country, to a group like emerging markets. Broader regions spread your money across more economies and currencies; narrower ones concentrate it, for better or worse. It describes where the holdings are based, which is not always where their sales come from.

Related Country Exposure Index Tracked

📖 Learn more World ETF vs S&P 500 → One ETF or several? →

How the fund copies its index: by buying the shares directly (physical) or using a swap contract (synthetic).

Physical replication means the fund actually owns the shares — either all of them, or a representative sample; synthetic means it uses a swap with a bank to mirror the index instead. Physical is the more common, more transparent route; synthetic can track some markets very tightly but adds a small counterparty risk. Neither is automatically better — it is a trade-off worth knowing.

Related Physical Full Synthetic

📖 Learn more What is an ETF? → What is an index, and why do so many ETFs just track one? →

The kind of business a holding is in — for example technology, healthcare or finance.

A sector groups companies by what they do — technology, healthcare, energy, finance and so on. A broad fund spreads across all of them; a sector fund bets on just one, which can soar or slump far more than the whole market. Knowing a fund’s sector mix tells you what is really driving its ups and downs.

Related Holdings Country Exposure

📖 Learn more Core-satellite → Thematic ETFs →

Reward earned per unit of bumpiness (the Sharpe ratio) — higher is better.

It divides the return by how bumpy the ride was, so it rewards funds that got there without wild swings. Above about 1 is generally seen as strong, though it depends on the period and what you compare against. It is a way to ask “was the return worth the stomach-churning?”, not a quality stamp on its own.

Related Sortino Volatility

📖 Learn more Sharpe, Sortino and Calmar side by side →

Like the Sharpe ratio, but it only counts downward swings as risk. Higher is better.

It is a cousin of the Sharpe ratio, but it ignores upside swings and only treats downward moves as risk — on the view that a jump up never hurt anyone. That makes it a fairer gauge for funds that are choppy mainly on the way up. Higher is better, and like all these ratios it depends on the period you measure.

Related Sharpe Downside Deviation

📖 Learn more Sharpe, Sortino and Calmar side by side →

The small gap between a fund’s buy price and its sell price at any moment. Crossing it — buying, then later selling — is a real, if tiny, cost on top of the fund’s own yearly fee.

At any moment there are two prices for a fund: a slightly higher one to buy at and a slightly lower one to sell at, and the gap between them is the spread. It is not a fee charged by anyone — it is simply the cost of trading, paid once each time you cross it. For large, widely-traded ETFs the spread is usually tiny; it tends to widen for niche or thinly-traded funds and can widen further in volatile markets. It sits alongside the TER as part of what owning and trading a fund really costs, but unlike the TER it is a one-off per trade, not a recurring yearly drag.

Related Total Cost TER

📖 Learn more What it costs to buy and sell an ETF → What it actually costs to hold an ETF →

A standard risk rating from 1 (lowest) to 7 (highest), set to a regulated formula. It reflects how sharply the fund’s value has moved up and down in the past — a higher number means a bumpier ride, not a worse fund.

The number comes from a regulated formula based mostly on how sharply the fund’s value has swung in the past, so it measures bumpiness, not quality or likely return. A 6 is not a “worse” fund than a 2 — it is a more volatile one, which can mean more long-run growth and a rougher ride. Use it to check whether a fund’s ups and downs match what you are comfortable with.

Related Volatility Max Drawdown

📖 Learn more Building a systematic ETF screen →

The fund uses a swap contract with a bank to mirror the index, instead of holding the shares directly.

Rather than hold the shares, the fund signs a swap with a bank that agrees to pay it the index return. This can track some markets very tightly and cheaply, but it adds counterparty risk — the small chance the swap partner cannot pay — which regulated funds limit and back with collateral. It reaches the same index a different way, with a different set of trade-offs to physical funds.

Related Replication Physical Full

📖 Learn more Physical vs Synthetic ETFs: What’s the Difference? → Fund structure for comparison shoppers →

The yearly running cost of the fund, shown as a % of your money. Lower is cheaper.

For example, a 0.20% fee works out at €0.20 a year for every €100 invested — that’s a generic illustration of the mechanic, not this fund’s own fee. It is skimmed quietly from inside the fund a little each day, so you never get a bill — but it drags on your return every year you hold. On a broad index ETF it is usually a small fraction of a percent; the gap between a cheap and a pricey fund looks tiny on day one but compounds over decades, which is why it is worth a glance.

Related Total Cost Fund Size Total Return

📖 Learn more What is an ETF? → What is an index, and why do so many ETFs just track one? →

How much more — or less — this fund holds of a sector or country than a broad world-stock tracker does. A positive tilt means it holds more than the whole world market; a negative one means less.

A plain world-equity tracker is used as the neutral baseline, so the tilt shows what makes this fund’s mix different from owning “the whole world” in one line. It is a description of exposure, not a judgement — a technology tilt is not automatically riskier or better than a bank tilt, it just concentrates the outcome differently. It is measured against a broad tracker we compute in-house, not a licensed benchmark index.

Related Sector Country Exposure

The all-in yearly cost of owning the fund — the headline fee (TER) plus trading and other running costs rolled in. A truer picture of what you actually pay than the TER alone.

The headline fee (TER) misses some real costs — trading inside the fund and other running expenses — and the all-in figure rolls those in. It usually sits a little above the TER and is the truer answer to “what does owning this actually cost me?”. Small gaps here compound over the years, so it is worth comparing next to the TER.

Related TER Fund Size Spread

📖 Learn more The all-in cost of an ETF (it’s more than the TER) → What it costs to buy and sell an ETF →

Performance that includes reinvested dividends — the fuller picture of what you actually earned.

It reinvests every dividend along the way, so it captures the full result of owning the fund — the price moving and the income it paid. For a distributing fund this reads higher than the price alone, because a price chart misses the cash that was handed out. When comparing funds, total return is the fairer, like-for-like number.

Related Price Return Distributing

📖 Learn more Accumulating vs distributing ETFs: what is the difference? → World ETF vs S&P 500 →

How closely the fund’s actual return has matched the index it targets — a small gap is normal; a bigger one means it strayed further from what it is meant to copy.

Even a fund that tracks an index well rarely matches it to the decimal — costs, sampling, cash drag and trading all nibble at the edges, and the gap can run either way. What we show today is an honest comparison against other funds tracking the same index, not a licensed index feed, so read it as “closer or further than similar funds”, not an official tracking-error figure. A persistently wide gap is worth a second look; a small one is normal wear from running a real fund in the real world.

Related Peer Percentile Index Tracked

📖 Learn more What it actually costs to hold an ETF → How "cheaper than 80% of similar ETFs" is actually calculated →

A European standard (UCITS) with investor-protection rules on diversification, liquidity and reporting.

UCITS is a European rulebook that most ETFs sold to everyday investors follow. It caps how much can sit in any one holding, requires funds to be easy to buy and sell, and sets standard disclosure — a baseline of investor protection. It says nothing about whether a fund will do well; it is about how the fund is run and safeguarded.

Related Domicile Replication

📖 Learn more ETF vs ETC → Why can’t I buy famous US ETFs like VOO in Europe? →

How much the price swings year to year — lower is calmer.

It measures how much the price bounces around its average — a higher number means bigger swings in both directions, not necessarily bigger losses. Calmer funds are easier to hold through a wobble; bumpier ones can test your nerves but sometimes reward the patience. It describes the ride, not the destination.

Related Max Drawdown Sharpe Sri

📖 Learn more All at once or bit by bit? → Developed vs emerging markets: what’s the difference for an ETF? →

The highest price over the last year.

It is simply the top of the fund’s price range over the past year — a quick sense of how high it has been. On its own it says nothing about whether a fund is a good buy: one sitting near its 52-week high might keep climbing or might pull back. Treat it as context about the range, not a signal.

Related Week52 Low

The lowest price over the last year.

The mirror of the 52-week high: the bottom of the fund’s price range over the past year. But a fund near its low is not automatically “cheap” or “due a bounce” — it may recover, or it may keep falling. It is a data point about the range, not a prediction of what comes next.

Related Week52 High