You have finally decided to buy your first ETF. You pull up the factsheet, ready to invest, and suddenly you are staring at a wall of jargon: KID, TER, ISIN, domicile, replication method, ACC, DIST. It feels like you need a finance degree just to buy a simple index fund. Sound familiar? Here is the good news. You do not need a finance degree. An ETF factsheet is one of the most standardised documents in all of investing. Every provider presents roughly the same information in roughly the same order. Once you know where to look and what each item actually means, you can size up almost any ETF in five minutes. Let’s walk through it together, section by section.

1. Start with the KID

Before the factsheet itself, look for a short document called the Key Information Document, or KID. You may also see it called the KIID in some places. Either way, it is the same thing,...