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Xtrackers MSCI EAFE 50% Hedged Equity ETF
It is an exchange-traded fund that gives investors a basket of large and mid-sized stocks from developed markets outside the US and Canada, with half of the currency risk hedged back into US dollars.
This fund is a simple box that holds hundreds of stocks from developed countries outside North America — think Japan, the UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Australia — and sells shares of that box to anyone with a brokerage account. When you buy it, you own a slice of big, well-known companies in those markets, all wrapped into one ticker you can trade like a stock during the day.
The twist is the currency. Foreign stocks pay off in foreign money, so an American investor's returns get pushed around by swings in the yen, euro, or pound. This fund hedges about half of that exposure back into US dollars, which means roughly half the portfolio's currency risk is neutralized and half is left to float. It is a middle path between a fully hedged fund and one that takes all the currency swings straight to the face. The index it tracks is built by MSCI, a company that designs and licenses the market benchmarks that thousands of funds are built around. The fund itself is issued by Xtrackers, the ETF brand of DWS Group, the big German asset manager. Xtrackers runs a wide family of these tracker funds, and this particular one is the EAFE-flavored version — Europe, Australasia, and the Far East.
For the investor, the appeal is plain: broad diversification across developed markets in one cheap, tradeable package, with a partial currency cushion. The fund charges a small annual fee, and it does not try to beat the market — it simply tries to match the index as closely as it can after costs. The people who buy it are usually building a global stock allocation and want the foreign exposure without betting entirely on where the dollar goes.
Saved answer · last researched 15 Nov 2026