The cheap S&P 500 funds tied this year. Equal weight did not.

In total return through Thursday, October 1, Invesco's equal-weight S&P 500 fund, BRSP, fell 1.4% from the end of June, while State Street's cheaper S&P 500 fund, ASPYM, rose 2.6%.

Inside that stretch, from the end of August, BRSP fell 4.4% in total return, and ASPYM was down 0.1%.

The cheap size-weighted funds are tied for the year. The table groups funds by what they hold, with the higher return first inside each group. This year starts at the last close of 2025, and the past year is the twelve months through that Thursday.

ASPYM, AVOO and AIVV sit within 0.02 percentage points. AITOT, which adds smaller U.S. companies, is ahead of ASPY for the year. BRSP trails ASPYM by 2.57 percentage points this year and by 3.92 over the past year.

The grade compares a fund only with others that make the same promise. For these S&P 500 funds, that is a group of 14. The two total-market funds are graded against a group of 11, so an A there is not a rank against ASPYM.

The cheapest fund ranks first

All four size-weighted S&P 500 funds earn an A, so the letter will not choose among them. ASPYM ranks first of the 14.

The heaviest part of the grade is the annual fee, at 30%, and ASPYM is first on that too. Next, at 25%, is whether the fund did what it promised. The smaller parts cover how it behaved when markets fell, how easily the shares trade, how concentrated the portfolio is, and how established the fund and its issuer are.

AIVV ranks second and AVOO third. Both charge 0.03%. Set against ASPYM's 0.02%, that is $1 a year on $10,000.

ASPY ranks fourth, and first on how easily the shares trade. That part of the grade is daily volume, and how close the share price sits to the value of the holdings.

The trading rank matters if you move in and out. ASPY charges 0.0945%, which is $7.45 a year more than ASPYM on $10,000, for the same stocks. A holder does not need that trading edge.

Equal weight owns less of the giants

Those size-weighted funds own the S&P 500, about four-fifths of the U.S. stock market by value, and a larger company gets a larger share.

On October 1, Nvidia was 8.4% of ASPY. Apple and Microsoft brought the top three to 21.5%.

BRSP owns the same 500 companies, and Invesco resets the weights each quarter. No holding is even 0.3% of the fund.

In its second-quarter review, Invesco said mega-cap stocks beat smaller stocks in the S&P 500, and that this weighed on the equal-weight approach, which owns less of the largest names and more of the smaller ones. The review covered the mutual fund that uses the approach. That fund returned 11.37% in the quarter, and the S&P 500 returned 15.20%.

BRSP charges 0.20%, ten times ASPYM's fee. It ranks seventh of the 14, a B. On our reading, the letter comes from the fee: cost is 30% of the grade, and BRSP ranks 10th of 14 there. It ranks second on holdings, which is the point of giving every company the same weight.

Smaller companies barely changed the year

AVTI tracks the Morningstar U.S. Total Market Index, the benchmark Vanguard lists for it. The index carried the CRSP name until a July rebrand.

Nearly every S&P 500 company also sits in AVTI, and 88.5% of AVTI and ASPYM line up by weight. This year AVTI trailed ASPYM by 0.12 percentage points, and over the past year it trailed by 0.38 percentage points.

AITOT also charges 0.03%. It ranks first of the 11 total-market funds, and AVTI ranks second. Both are an A.

If you want less of your money in the largest companies, BRSP keeps every name near the same size, at 0.20% a year. If you want the S&P 500 weighted by company size, and you plan to hold it, ASPYM does that at 0.02%, and it ranks first of the S&P 500 funds on our grade.