IEFA vs SMEA overlap

54% by weight, as of October 14, 2026: heavy overlap. 385 companies appear in both funds; they make up 54% of IEFA and 99% of SMEA.

The largest shared positions are ASML, HSBA, ROP, SHEL and NOVN. Ranked by the smaller of the two weights, which is the part you would own twice.

Out of every $100 split evenly between them, about $54 (half in each fund) buys identical positions. The rest is exposure only one of the two funds gives you: 2,234 names only in IEFA, 0 only in SMEA. Half in each behaves like 167 equally weighted stocks, against 261 for IEFA alone and 104 for SMEA alone. Whether that duplication is a problem depends on the mix you want; this is a description, not advice.

Partly: 54% of the money in SMEA and IEFA is the same, as of October 14, 2026. SMEA is iShares Core MSCI Europe UCITS ETF EUR (Acc) (ISIN IE00B4K48X80), an Irish-domiciled UCITS fund on the MSCI Europe index. European brokers generally don't sell US-listed ETFs such as IEFA to retail clients, because those funds publish no KID (the PRIIPs key information document); UCITS funds do.

Yes. SMEA also trades as IMAE (Euronext Amsterdam, EUR) and EUNK (Xetra, EUR). Each is the same portfolio in another currency, on another exchange or paying its dividends out, so IEFA vs EUNK also overlaps 54%.

For every company held by both funds we take the smaller of its two weights and add them up. The weights come from the full holdings files iShares publish, not a top-10 sample, and companies are matched by their ISIN so share classes stay apart. Sector overlap applies the same rule to the issuers' sector labels; "behaves like N equally weighted stocks" is one over the sum of the squared weights.