How To Find The Right ETF On Trading 212

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]There are over 5,000 ETFs to choose from on Trading 212. So, how do you pick the right ETF for you? In this video, I'm going to go through how to do that and go through the list of different types of ETFs available on Trading 212 so that you can make an informed decision for yourself. Now, if you go into Trading 212 and into the search menu and then you scroll all the way down and right at the bottom, it does say browse all stocks and ETFs. Just press on ETFs.

[00:00:30]You'll see that a further list comes up with different classifications of ETFs.

[00:00:35]So, let's just go through all of them.

[00:00:37]The first one is equity. And as a broker, Trading 212 focuses on stocks and shares. And this is essentially what most people mean when they say equity or equity, whichever one you want to use.

[00:00:49]There are over 3,800 choices that you can make. So, let's go into it and let me explain a bit more. So when you go into equity, you can see that the list actually diverges and becomes even more confusing. So the first one is actually benchmark ETFs. Now this would probably be the most common type of ETFs. When someone says ETFs, they synonymously mean funds. And yes, it can be quite confusing, but the main contenders are things like the S&P 500, things like the O world. You get a bit of different funds here. For example, the quantum computing fund. I would class that as a thematic fund. But anyway, you might actually see some overlap. We have things like the Footsie 100, the Footsie Europe, emerging markets, essentially indices, which are just a list of companies. For example, the S&P 500. The S&P 500 index is a list of the top 500ish companies of the United States of America. And essentially, this has become the benchmark. And a lot of people refer to the stock market as the S&P 500 interchangeably, which can also be confusing. Now, the list itself technically isn't an investment. So, you're going to want to buy a fund that tracks the list, but because we're not in America, you're going to have to buy a fund that buys those companies in dollars and then does the magic and gives it back to you in pounds. Yes, there are many different ways in which you can buy the S&P 500. You can even choose to buy a fund that is in dollars, but you're never really going to get the actual S&P 500 to invest into because technically that doesn't exist. So, this is what it means by benchmark. You're tracking an index. And like I said, there are a few indices, but mostly what you'll see is you'll see the popular ones repeated by many different providers. Even the same providers have many variants of the same index. The S&P 500 will have hundreds if not thousands of variants from different companies.

[00:02:40]for example, iShares and even within Eyesshares, it will have many different S&P 500 funds. For example, if you want to do a Sharia compliant version of the S&P 500, if you want to do a currency hedged version of the S&P 500, yes, I know it gets very confusing. So, when it comes to equity ETFs, the main one is going to be benchmarks. But, for example, under benchmarks, technology is the most famous. Now, yes, I would probably call this a thematic ETF. for example, a semiconductor fund which actually focuses on companies that are related to manufacturing or services around semiconductors. Now, if you are an investor of any sort, your capital is always at risk and the value of your portfolio can go down as well as up.

[00:03:18]Now, as an investor, there's two things that you really ought to try to control.

[00:03:22]Now, the first one in my opinion is definitely try to be well diversified across different sectors and different regions. And the second one is increasing your time horizon because yes over the short term there could be negative fluctuations but as long as you're well diversified across different regions and sectors if time is your friend the chances are you will be making some gain over the long term not guaranteed by the way now if you are looking to invest into ETFs I'm not saying you should avoid something like this fund which focuses heavily on one specific theme which is semiconductor.

[00:03:58]Now, you just need to understand that you need full diversification across your portfolio because if you went all into this fund over here, yes, your past year would have been amazing, but what happens when semiconductors don't do so well? Well, your portfolio will probably tank and over the long term, I'm not sure what's going to happen. By the way, you can grab a free fractional share worth up to 100 on Trading to One. All you have to do is to follow the link in the description box down below, or you can scan this QR code appearing on the screen right now. Alternatively, if you've already signed up to Trading 212 over the past 10 days, but have not received your free fractional share, then all you have to do is to press the three horizontal line menu at the bottom of the screen. Then scroll all the way down until you see the section and use promo code. And in this section, just enter the code Jub AI R and you should receive a free fractional share. Now I will spend all day if I go through every single section. But essentially a thematic ETF if you go into it will track a specific theme. For example, artificial intelligence. Yes, you could say that semiconductors isn't its own theme because it's a very small part of a specific theme. But if we go into artificial intelligence for example, it'll invest into companies that are related to AI for example AMD with their CPUs and GPUs. A lot of memory companies here, you know, you get the drift. Now, like I said, if you go into a thematic ETF and it's your only holding and that's your 100% portfolio waiting, you're going to get very little diversification across different sectors and typically across different countries too. For example, this fund over here has a 75 76% waiting towards the US which could be a good thing over the short term but over the long term there are no such guarantees that one you know country will outperform the rest of the world. So under equity you can see there are a few more themes for example consumer discretionary materials industrials energy healthcare financials you can go into it and look at it yourself but we've covered most of these equity ETFs whether it's a benchmark or a theme essentially the fund manager does the stock picking for you typically with a very well diversified basket of different companies but like I said not all ETFs are created equally and you can get a very undiversified ETF too for example the SP20. Speaking of which, this is the SP20. And over the past year, as you can see, it is up by 33%, very similar to the S&P 500. But as we know, over the past few years, the S&P 500 really only has been propelled by the top 10 companies. You're getting very similar returns to the S&P 500, but if something goes wrong to those top 20 companies, well, then you are actually taking more risk. And as you can see, the SP20 relies heavily on just 20 companies. These are the top 10 holdings and it's ridiculous because Nvidia and Apple together account for nearly a third of the entire index. Now that you understand equity ETFs, let's quickly go into fixed income ETFs. Now there are a bunch for example corporate, government, aggregate bonds, emerging markets. Now fixed income usually means bonds. Now just because you buy an ETF does not always mean that you own the underlying bonds. The bond market is very very complicated. Even I can't wrap my head around it. Sometimes they just track the bond performance, sometimes they might own it, sometimes it's a mixture of both. But for example, under here you'll get things like the isshares euro high yield corporate bond ESG accumulating fund. I don't get too much into bonds because you know the kids these days find it very boring. But with an ETF like this, you can get indirect exposure to the bond market. Again, you might not own these bonds, but you can benefit from the price movement of the bonds.

[00:07:39]You might be also wondering why not just buy a money market fund. Well, you can do that. There are so many options on trading 212. So, under government again we'll see a lot of the similar stuff.

[00:07:48]For example, bonds and guilts. Under emerging markets, similar these are mostly bonds. You can even see some suk funds here. The list really does go on.

[00:07:57]Now, like I said before, why not just go for a money market fund? Well, under fixed income, there is a section called money market. Now over here there are over 20 money market funds which you can invest into. Just bear in mind not all of them will be in pounds. So yeah just invest in your local currency for the best exchange rate which is no exchange at all. That is the best exchange rate.

[00:08:18]Now commodities are a different type of asset class as opposed to equities or even fixed income like bonds. Now commodities are things like precious metals, gold, silver and oil. So you don't actually own these, but you benefit from the price increases or decrease because of course money from investments has to go into them in order for them to expand their fulfillment. So under precious metals, we can see there's gold, silver, again, not every ETF is tracked the same way. Some are vastly different from others. For example, the Eyesshares physical gold doesn't mean you actually own the gold.

[00:08:53]you only really own shares of the ETF, which you can't ever exchange for gold, unless of course you sell your cash and then buy it directly. But there's a bunch here, gold and silver being the most important. I'm sure platinum is going to be on the list and yes, it is.

[00:09:07]Fun fact is I have a PhD in biioaterial.

[00:09:09]So this is probably the one area where I probably know a bit more about the underlying things like gold and silver.

[00:09:16]And then we have things like energy over here. I do expect things like oil. As you can see, I'm not too shocked that it is here. There's a bunch of other stuff here, including agriculture and livestock, which is fun to see. And then we have specialtity ETFs. A lot of leverage shares here. Again, I would never actually go into these, so I'm just going to leave it for now.

[00:09:36]Currently, I'm on the trading to invest account. And some of these might not be able to be invested into using a stocks and shares is. There's a lot of leveraged stuff here, which I'm not going to go into, and some alternative investments. Lastly, we have mixed allocation. Now, the best way to explain this are ready-made funds consisting of multiple different ETFs. Now, we have aggressive, dynamic, global, moderate, and conservative. When we go into aggressive, you can see we have the iShares growth portfolio. Again, I believe this is a portfolio made out of different funds. And I am very correct.

[00:10:09]When I go into fund allocation, you can see this is a bunch of ETFs or funds slapped together. We have the Eyesshares MSI USA screened fund. Again, seemingly you're really increasing diversification by going for a fund like this. But when you go into countries, you can see that you know how much more diversified can you really get as long as you have most of the countries and most of the sectors. Just buying extra and extra and overlapping ETFs might actually do very minimal in terms of return and might just increase fund manager fees. So then with all of this crazy choice, what exactly should you be looking for when picking an ETF or multiple ETFs on Trading 212? Now, as I alluded to before, you ought to really want to have a piece of every single pie around the world. Now, what you want to do is to go into any fund and scroll all the way down. Go into fund allocation. Ensure that you are sufficiently, you know, diversified across different sectors.

[00:11:08]So, make sure you have all the different sectors. As you can see, if you really wanted to be diversified with this fund over here, you're not really getting much in the way of real estate. And in terms of countries, you're not really getting that much diversification. So, in terms of emerging markets, you're not getting a great piece there, even though this is an all world fund. It doesn't include everything in the whole world.

[00:11:31]And for that, you can mix and match different ETFs. Now, let's say you wanted to go into this fund here, the Wisdom Tree Quantum Computing Fund. What you're going to want to check out is the fund allocation. Now, when you go into countries, for example, you're going to see it's heavily weighted towards the US, which a lot of ETFs are. So, it's not always the worst thing. But when you go into sectors, you can see technology- wise, you are really, really leaning into that. In fact, it is almost 100% technology. When you factor in that communication services are practically ICT, information communication technologies. They're all part of the same thing. Now, what if someone recommended this, the iShares Edge MSI USA Value Factor ETF? Now, if this was going to be your sole ETF that makes up 100% of your portfolio, you're going to really want to make sure that you are diversified properly. As you can see, 100% waiting towards the US. In terms of sectors, at first it does look like it's good diversification, but then you look at technology waiting over half of the entire ETF. So, I'd probably give this a miss if this was going to be my sole ETF. So, make sure to check out some of my other videos, and I'll see you in the next video.