CSB vs DGRO

CSBBVictoryShares US Small Cap High Div Volatility Wtd ETF

DGROAiShares Core Dividend Growth ETF

In short

CSB Most dividend ETFs crowd into mega-cap payers. CSB goes the other way: the 100 highest yielders drawn from profitable US small caps, weighted by volatility instead of size, so the jumpiest names get the smallest slice.

DGRO BlackRock's dividend-growth screen casts a wider net than most: five straight years of raises rather than ten, plus a payout-ratio cap that filters out stretched payers. About 400 US dividend raisers, large through small cap, for 0.08% a year.

Stated mandate

CSB The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the performance of the Nasdaq Victory US Small Cap High Dividend 100 Volatility Weighted Index.

DGRO The fund seeks to follow an index of U.S. equities whose dividends have grown consistently.

Why people hold it

• CSB Weights each holding by the inverse of its volatility rather than market cap, and caps any single sector at 25%, which keeps one hot corner from running the portfolio.nasdaqomx.com
• The starting pool has a profitability gate: the 500 largest US companies under $3B in market cap with positive earnings in each of the four most recent quarters.vcm.com
• Live since 2015, holding roughly 100 stocks and paying monthly, with tracking that has stayed close to the index it advertises.
• A small-cap high-dividend sleeve is a rarity in a peer group built mostly on large-cap payers, so it covers ground the household dividend names largely skip.

• DGRO Costs 0.08% a year, a small fraction of the typical fee among US dividend-screen ETFs.
• The screen has teeth: a qualified dividend, five years of uninterrupted dividend growth, a payout ratio under 75%, and the top decile of yielders cut before the other tests run.ishares.com
• Roughly 400 names across large, mid and small caps, weighted by the dividend dollars each company pays rather than by market cap.ishares.comcib.barclays
• Tracks the Morningstar US Dividend Growth Index about as tightly as this group gets, and it's an actively traded, multi-billion-dollar fund that has run since 2014.

Worth knowing

• CSB The 0.40% fee sits near the middle of its cohort, but the giants of dividend investing (SCHD, VIG, DGRO) charge a fraction of that for large-cap exposure.
• Small caps swing harder than the blue-chip payers most dividend funds hold. Volatility weighting shapes that risk, it does not remove it.
• It trades lightly next to the cohort's household names, and the index reconstitutes only twice a year (March and September), so the yield roster is set in between.nasdaqomx.com

• DGRO Chopping the highest-yielding decile is deliberate: this is built around payout growth and dividend durability, not the fattest current yield on the shelf.ishares.com
• Only dividend payers qualify, so some of the market's biggest non-paying growth companies sit outside the portfolio by rule.ishares.com
• Income arrives quarterly, not monthly, and this is plain US stock exposure: no buffer, no hedge, full equity risk.

Full CSB profile⁠

Full DGRO profile⁠