CBSE vs DFAU

CBSEDClough Select Equity ETF

DFAUADimensional US Core Equity Market ETF

In short

CBSE A hand-picked active equity fund with an unusual triple job: current income, capital growth, and preservation of principal. Small, thinly traded, and priced like a manager you hire rather than an index you rent.

DFAU Active management priced like an index fund. Dimensional spreads across roughly 2,400 US stocks, then tilts the weights toward value, profitability and momentum instead of simply mirroring the Russell 3000.

Stated mandate

CBSE The Fund seeks current income, capital growth, and preservation of principal.

DFAU Seeks long-term capital appreciation. It uses an integrated research, portfolio-design, management, and trading process to build a broadly diversified portfolio of U.S. companies while balancing long-term return drivers, risk, shorter-term considerations, and trading costs.

Why people hold it

• CBSE Genuinely active: the managers buy individual names screened for above-average financial characteristics, undervaluation or growth potential, instead of mirroring an index.
• One mandate, three jobs. The stated objective pairs current income and capital growth with preservation of principal, an unusual combination to write into a single equity fund.
• What is inside the portfolio is the strongest part of the package, holding up better than the fund's cost or risk profile.
• Trading since 2020, so there is live history to judge rather than a backtest.

• DFAU Charges 0.12% a year, well under the 0.65% median for active US equity funds and the cheapest of the top-graded names in its group (AVLC, DFAC, FELC).
• Holds roughly 2,400 US companies, so no single name steers the fund. Whole-market coverage, not a concentrated bet.
• Active without the stock-picking drama: it leans weights toward value, profitability and momentum, using the Russell 3000 as its reference point rather than a rigid rulebook.
• A multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively, and one of the strongest overall implementations in its active US equity peer group.

Worth knowing

• CBSE At 0.85% a year, it prices above the typical active US equity ETF and many times index-style rivals like DFAU (0.12%) and FELC (0.18%), leaving it in the group's lower tier on cost.
• It is a small fund that does not trade much, so spreads can widen and limit orders matter more than with a mega-cap index ETF.
• Despite the income language in the objective, distributions land once or twice a year rather than monthly.

• DFAU Those tilts cut both ways: results can drift from a plain Russell 3000 fund for long stretches, in either direction.
• No published index behind it. The trade-off for flexibility is that you're buying Dimensional's process, not a public set of rules you can check line by line.
• Distributions land quarterly, not monthly, and the mandate is long-term capital appreciation rather than income.

Full CBSE profile⁠

Full DFAU profile⁠