In This Article:
Designed to provide broad exposure to the Style Box - Large Cap Value category of the market, the Invesco S&P 500 High Dividend Low Volatility ETF (SPHD) is a smart beta exchange traded fund launched on 10/18/2012.
What Are Smart Beta ETFs?
For a long time now, the ETF industry has been flooded with products based on market capitalization weighted indexes, which are designed to represent the broader market or a particular market segment.
Investors who believe in market efficiency should consider market cap indexes, as they replicate market returns in a low-cost, convenient, and transparent way.
There are some investors, though, who think it's possible to beat the market with great stock selection; this group likely invests in another class of funds known as smart beta, which track non-cap weighted strategies.
Based on specific fundamental characteristics, or a combination of such, these indexes attempt to pick stocks that have a better chance of risk-return performance.
While this space offers a number of choices to investors, including simplest equal-weighting, fundamental weighting and volatility/momentum based weighting methodologies, not all these strategies have been able to deliver superior results.
Fund Sponsor & Index
The fund is managed by Invesco, and has been able to amass over $3.23 billion, which makes it one of the average sized ETFs in the Style Box - Large Cap Value. Before fees and expenses, this particular fund seeks to match the performance of the S&P 500 Low Volatility High Dividend Index.
The S&P 500 Low Volatility High Dividend Index comprises of 50 securities traded on the S&P 500 Index that historically have provided high dividend yields and low volatility.
Cost & Other Expenses
For ETF investors, expense ratios are an important factor when considering a fund's return; in the long-term, cheaper funds actually have the ability to outperform their more expensive cousins if all other things remain the same.
Operating expenses on an annual basis are 0.30% for this ETF, which makes it on par with most peer products in the space.
SPHD's 12-month trailing dividend yield is 4.25%.
Sector Exposure and Top Holdings
It is important to delve into an ETF's holdings before investing despite the many upsides to these kinds of funds like diversified exposure, which minimizes single stock risk. And, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.
For SPHD, it has heaviest allocation in the Real Estate sector --about 18.80% of the portfolio --while Utilities and Consumer Staples round out the top three.