Designed to provide broad exposure to the Style Box - Large Cap Value category of the market, the SPDR Russell 1000 Yield Focus ETF (ONEY) is a smart beta exchange traded fund launched on 12/02/2015.
What Are Smart Beta ETFs?
Products that are based on market cap weighted indexes, which are strategies designed to reflect a specific market segment or the market as a whole, have traditionally dominated the ETF industry.
A good option for investors who believe in market efficiency, market cap weighted indexes offer a low-cost, convenient, and transparent way of replicating market returns.
If you're the kind of investor who would rather try and beat the market through good stock selection, then smart beta funds are your best choice; this fund class is known for tracking non-cap weighted strategies.
By attempting to pick stocks that have a better chance of risk-return performance, non-cap weighted indexes are based on certain fundamental characteristics, or a combination of such.
Even though this space provides many choices to investors--think one of the simplest methodologies like equal-weighting and more complicated ones like fundamental and volatility/momentum based weighting--not all have been able to deliver first-rate results.
Fund Sponsor & Index
The fund is managed by State Street Global Advisors, and has been able to amass over $776.03 million, which makes it one of the average sized ETFs in the Style Box - Large Cap Value. This particular fund seeks to match the performance of the Russell 1000 Yield Focused Factor Index before fees and expenses.
The Russell 1000 Yield Focused Factor Index reflects the performance of a segment of large-capitalization U.S. equity securities demonstrating a combination of core factors high value, high quality, and low size characteristics, with a focus factor comprising high yield characteristics.
Cost & Other Expenses
Expense ratios are an important factor in the return of an ETF and in the long-term, cheaper funds can significantly outperform their more expensive cousins, other things remaining the same.
Annual operating expenses for ONEY are 0.20%, which makes it on par with most peer products in the space.
The fund has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 2.36%.
Sector Exposure and Top Holdings
While ETFs offer diversified exposure, which minimizes single stock risk, a deep look into a fund's holdings is a valuable exercise. And, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.
For ONEY, it has heaviest allocation in the Financials sector --about 19.20% of the portfolio --while Consumer Staples and Materials round out the top three.