what is ishares 
a global leader in exchange traded funds etfs ishares has over 2 trillion invested in more than 800 different product offerings across a wide range of asset classes and investment strategies 1 ishares is a subsidiary of blackrock the world s largest asset management company and blackrock is responsible for issuing and marketing ishares products 2founded in the year 2000 the initial ishares listings were established on major exchanges such as the nyse euronext chicago board options exchange nasdaq and nyse arca 3the basics of isharesetfs from ishares are a flexible low cost way for investors to gain exposure to various market segments including fixed income emerging markets and broad based indexes for example the ishares core s p 500 etf ivv tracks the s p 500 index whereas the ishares msci emerging market etf eem follows more than 800 large and mid cap companies in developing countries 45by combining low fees with tax efficiency in an asset that seeks to match an index etfs can build greater longer term savings compared with mutual funds beyond savings most etfs aim to match the performance of a benchmark index which means turnover is less frequent and thus fees are lower however this doesn t come at the expense of performance in fact ishares core etfs outperformed more than 76 of their peers on average from 2015 to 2020 6almost all major global marketplaces list ishares funds including the london stock exchange the hong kong stock exchange the toronto stock exchange among others at any given time ishares and vanguard represent more than 50 of the total etf market 7examples of ishares etfsfor u s investors ishares offers 394 etfs focused on commodities equities fixed income multi assets and real estate in addition investors can choose to focus on developing emerging or frontier markets specific regions and individual countries industry sectors megatrends such as climate change demographic change and technological breakthroughs thematic investing such as environmental social and governance esg criteria and other selection methodologies 8 below are some popular products under the ishares brand 