CSD vs FPXI

CSDBInvesco S&P Spin-Off ETF

FPXICFirst Trust International Equity Opportunities ETF

In short

CSD Most funds in this corner of the market chase IPOs. CSD buys the other kind of new company: businesses cut loose from a bigger parent, held only for their first four years on their own, then rolled off.

FPXI The IPO trade, minus America. FPXI tracks the IPOX International Index, so recently listed companies from Europe and Asia arrive in one ticker instead of a brokerage scavenger hunt across foreign exchanges.

Stated mandate

CSD The fund seeks exposure to companies spun off from parent companies by tracking the S&P U.S. Spin-Off Index, investing at least 90% of assets in index securities or depositary receipts.

FPXI The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the IPOX® International Index.

Why people hold it

• CSD The mandate is narrow and literal: U.S. companies spun off from a parent within the last four years, each with at least $1 billion in float-adjusted market cap.spglobal.com
• Fresh spin-offs get picked up at the monthly rebalance and every name ages out after four years, so the basket keeps turning over instead of going stale.spglobal.comspglobal.com 2
• 0.65% a year (0.66% gross, net of a waiver through August 31, 2028), near the middle of its eight-fund category, where First Trust's FPX charges 0.57% with no waiver.
• Live since December 2006 and still running the same spin-off mandate, it sits among the stronger builds in its small peer group.

• FPXI The overseas seat in a corner of the market that is mostly US-focused: its peer shelf is dominated by American IPO and spin-off funds, while this one buys newly public names listed abroad.
• Rules-based, not a stock-picking hunch. An index decides which new listings go in and when they age out, so you are not tracking foreign IPO calendars yourself.
• Launched in 2014, so it has run through several very different IPO cycles, and it carries enough assets and daily volume to be a workable trade rather than a ghost ticker.
• Sits in the upper half of the IPO and spin-off group overall, helped by how smoothly it trades for a fund holding non-US stocks. Pays quarterly.

Worth knowing

• CSD About 30 holdings, so one company's news can move the whole fund. This is a concentrated slice, not a core holding.
• One of the lighter-traded funds in its category, which can mean wider gaps between what buyers bid and sellers ask.
• Income is an afterthought here: distributions land once or twice a year, and the index is built around corporate events, not yield.spglobal.com

• FPXI 0.70% a year is the median price in this niche, but it runs above the fund's US-focused sibling FPX at 0.57%, and it is a thematic-fund fee, not an index-fund fee.
• About 60 stocks, all recently public. Individual names carry real weight, and freshly listed companies tend to move harder in both directions than seasoned large caps.
• Independent data on how closely the fund has hugged the IPOX International Index is thin, so its index fidelity is harder to verify than for mainstream benchmarks.

Full CSD profile⁠

Full FPXI profile⁠