BOUT vs PTLC

BOUTDCapForce IBD Breakout Opportunities ETF

PTLCAPacer Trendpilot US Large Cap ETF

In short

BOUT An index fund for the chart-watching crowd: BOUT follows the IBD Breakout Stocks Index, a roughly 50-stock growth screen drawn from Investor's Business Daily's Composite Ranking, wrapped in a plain vanilla ETF.

PTLC Most index funds ride out every drawdown. PTLC tracks an index with an exit ramp: a rules-based trend signal that shifts its large-cap exposure toward 3-month Treasury bills and back, with no manager judgment in the loop.

Stated mandate

BOUT The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the performance of the IBD Breakout Stocks Index. It normally invests at least 80% of net assets in the Index’s equity securities and generally holds them in index weights.

PTLC The Fund seeks to track the total return performance, before fees and expenses, of the Pacer Trendpilot US Large Cap Index. That index uses a rules-based trend-following approach that alternates exposure between equities and 3-Month US Treasury bills.

Why people hold it

• BOUT Rules first, hunches never: it tracks the IBD Breakout Stocks Index and holds the names at index weights, with at least 80% of net assets in them.
• About 50 holdings, screened on IBD's Composite Ranking, so a growth name actually moves the fund instead of vanishing inside a thousand-stock benchmark.
• Trading since 2018 as a standard 1940 Act ETF, so the screen has run through a multi-year stretch of markets under one published mandate.

• PTLC The switch is mechanical. A rules-based trend signal alternates exposure between US large-cap equities and 3-month Treasury bills, so nobody is making a gut call mid-panic.paceretfs.com
• Underneath the signal sits plain large-cap America: roughly 500 stocks benchmarked to the S&P 500, not a niche factor slice.paceretfs.com
• Trading since 2015 and now a multi-billion-dollar fund, so the rules have run through live markets, not just backtests.
• Among the index-tracking funds we cover, it lands in the upper half, and it follows its own index closely.

Worth knowing

• BOUT 0.80% a year is active-fund pricing on an index product. The broad trackers it competes with (SCHK, VOOV and company) charge a sliver of that, and BOUT sits in the group's lower tier on cost.
• Small asset base, light trading. Spreads can run wide, so how you enter and exit matters more here than with a mega-cap index fund.
• A concentrated growth screen rides rougher than a total-market fund, and cash comes back once or twice a year rather than quarterly.

• PTLC 0.60% a year is real money next to vanilla large-cap trackers like SCHK (0.03%) or VOOV (0.07%). The trend rules are what the extra buys.
• Trend signals read past prices. Moves into T-bills, or back into stocks, arrive after a market shift is already underway rather than ahead of it.
• Distributions land once or twice a year, so it isn't structured as a steady income drip.

Full BOUT profile⁠

Full PTLC profile⁠