AGMI vs RING

AGMIBThemes Silver Miners ETF

RINGBiShares MSCI Global Gold Miners ETF

In short

AGMI Most "precious metals miners" funds are gold funds with a silver garnish. AGMI is the straight shot: an index of about 40 global silver miners, run at 0.35% a year, under what the category typically charges.

RING The low-fee way to own the gold diggers. RING holds roughly 40 gold mining companies worldwide for 0.39% a year, undercutting most funds in its niche, and it has been running that playbook since 2012.

Stated mandate

AGMI The Fund is designed to follow an index of companies materially exposed to silver mining, with returns pursued before fees and expenses.

RING The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the Solactive Global Gold Explorers & Developers Total Return Index. It invests at least 80% of total assets in securities of companies economically tied to gold exploration.

Why people hold it

• AGMI 0.35% a year undercuts the category's typical fee and the bigger names beside it: RING and SLVP at 0.39%, GDX at 0.51%, GDXJ at 0.52%.
• Silver, not gold with a silver sleeve. It follows the STOXX Global Silver Miners Index: companies materially exposed to silver mining, listed anywhere in the world.
• About 40 holdings, passively indexed. The miners actually digging silver stay visible instead of being diluted inside a broad metals basket.
• Lands in the upper tier of its precious-metals-miner peer group, with cost doing much of the heavy lifting.

• RING At 0.39% a year it charges less than the typical gold-miner fund, and less than VanEck's GDX and GDXJ, the category's best-known names.ishares.com
• Pure play by design: the index targets companies primarily in the business of gold mining, so you get miners rather than a mixed metals-and-materials basket.ishares.com
• The mandate is global, not US-only, so the portfolio can reach gold producers listed across developed and emerging markets.ishares.com
• Live since 2012, a multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively, and one of the strongest builds in its precious-metals miner peer group.

Worth knowing

• AGMI A 2024 launch with a small asset base and light trading. Spreads can run wider than the category's veterans, and there is little history to judge it on.
• One metal, one industry. Miners' costs are fixed while silver's price moves, so their shares tend to swing harder than the metal in both directions.
• Distributions come once or twice a year, not monthly. This is a miners fund, not an income sleeve.

• RING Roughly 40 stocks in a single industry. The largest miners carry real weight, so one company's bad quarter is felt across the fund.ishares.com
• This is mining equity, not bullion. Alongside the gold price you take on company execution, mine geology, labor and country risk.ishares.com
• Income is an afterthought here: distributions come once or twice a year, not monthly.

Full AGMI profile⁠

Full RING profile⁠