Many of you have decided to build an ETF portfolio in order to simplify your life, to improve the overall returns by diminishing returns. Often, all of those (and many others) benefits come at a cost. One such costs is control over what the ETF’s that you hold end up owning. In many cases, the ETF only holds the underlying index such as an ETF like SPY which holds the 500 stocks in thee S&P500. But in other cases, the ETF’s have some level of choice in what securities they end up buying.
That is the case for most dividend ETF’s that either buy their own selection of stocks or have a custom built index that they track. I know many of you are looking for income in your ETF portfolios and clearly holding dividend ETF’s is a popular way of doing so.
One of the things that I have not liked about such ETF’s is the fact that many hold so many financial stocks. In a period like the current one, with Europe on the brink of a collapse and the whole economy struggling so much, financial/bank stocks don’t seem like the best play. There are so many dividend stocks out there that are easier to understand, have much clearer balance sheets and have less risk of imploding if things go wrong. I personally would underweight financials in any dividend portfolio that I’d hold, if I bought any at all.
This morning, I read about DTN, a Wisdom Tree Dividend ex-Financial ETF. That is exactly the type of ETF that makes a lot of sense to me and one more reason why having a few thousand ETF’s available makes a lot of sense. I’m more than happy to have a few more options when shopping around for dividend ETF’s and this is one that I personally like a lot. Here are a few numbers for DTN:
Ticker Name Market Cap Price Return YTD Fees Dividend Yield
DTN WisdomTree Dividend Ex-Financials Fund $1,076,958,007.81 $53.58 5.01 0.38 3.52
And you can also see a few alternatives:
Ticker Name Market Cap Price Return YTD Fees Dividend Yield
VIG Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF $11,031,980,468.75 $56.51 4.48 0.18 2.13
DVY iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend Index Fund $10,378,125,000.00 $56.25 6.57 0.4 3.46
SDY SPDR S&P Dividend ETF $9,068,790,039.06 $55.33 4.28 0.35 3.24
VYM Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF $3,648,153,076.17 $47.87 7.33 0.18 2.88
HDV iShares High Dividend Equity Fund $1,700,270,019.53 $59.45 9.09 0.4 2.92
DLN WisdomTree LargeCap Dividend Fund $1,153,195,678.71 $52.18 7.90 0.28 2.8
That is it for now, as always, I appreciate any feedback regarding your experiences with building an ETF portfolio!