Read the fund
ETF Investing
How ETFs actually work under the hood — costs, structure, replication, and the choices that matter when picking between similar funds.
1
What Is an ETF?
A single tradable share that represents a whole basket of underlying holdings.
2
TER — Total Expense Ratio
The annual cost of holding the fund, taken automatically, not billed separately.
3
AUM — Assets Under Management
The fund's total size — why bigger usually (but not always) means safer and cheaper to trade.
4
Accumulating vs. Distributing
Do dividends get reinvested inside the fund automatically, or paid out to you in cash?
5
Physical vs. Synthetic Replication
Does the fund actually buy the underlying securities, or use a swap to deliver the index's return instead?
6
Currency Hedging
Canceling out FX swings between your fund's currency and its holdings' currencies.
7
Tracking Difference
The real, measured gap between what the fund actually returned and what its benchmark returned.
8
UCITS vs. US-Domiciled ETFs
Two different regulatory wrappers for the same underlying strategy — with real tax and access consequences.