DFAI vs FPA

DFAIADimensional International Core Equity Market ETF

FPAFFirst Trust Asia Pacific ex-Japan AlphaDEX Fund

In short

DFAI Dimensional's take on developed markets outside the US: several thousand stocks, plus deliberate leans toward cheaper and more profitable companies. Index-fund breadth with a research desk setting the weights, priced above the plain vanilla crowd.

FPA A rare cut of the map: developed Asia-Pacific with Japan left out, run through First Trust's AlphaDEX growth-and-value screen instead of plain market-cap weighting. About 100 names, live since 2011.

Stated mandate

DFAI The fund seeks long-term capital appreciation through an integrated approach combining research, portfolio design, portfolio management, and trading.

FPA The fund seeks before-fee results that generally track the price and yield of the Nasdaq AlphaDEX Asia Pacific Ex-Japan Index. The index uses Nasdaq's AlphaDEX methodology to select stocks from the developed-markets Asia-Pacific universe excluding Japan.

Why people hold it

• DFAI Holds several thousand developed-market stocks outside the US, so no single name, sector or country steers the fund.
• The tilts are in the mandate, not the marketing: it leans toward cheaper stocks and more profitable companies while still owning the broad market.
• Portfolio construction is one of the stronger builds in its peer group, and the fund is a multi-billion-dollar, actively traded name that pays quarterly.

• FPA Narrow mandate most rivals don't offer: developed Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, while the top-scoring funds in its peer group spread across broad international baskets.ftportfolios.com
• AlphaDEX ranks the universe on growth and value factors and holds the stocks that score best, so index membership isn't just a function of company size.ftportfolios.com
• Fully rules-based and running since 2011: roughly 100 stocks, quarterly distributions, no manager discretion over what makes the cut.

Worth knowing

• DFAI At 0.18% it costs many times what plain cap-weighted rivals like VEA, SPDW and SCHF charge. The tilts are what the extra buys.
• MSCI World ex USA IMI is the yardstick, not a leash. Dimensional builds the portfolio its own way, so it can look and behave differently from that index.
• Launched in late 2020, so its live record is shorter than the index giants', and on the whole package it lands in the lower half of its developed-core cohort.

• FPA At 0.80% a year it costs well more than double the typical international multifactor ETF. Peers like INTF (0.16%) and GSIE (0.25%) run factor screens for a fraction of that.
• Thinly traded and small by category standards, so spreads can run wider and larger orders can push the price around more than in the group's heavyweights.
• On the things that compound quietly (fee drag, trading friction), it sits in the weaker tier of the international multifactor group rather than near the front.

Full DFAI profile⁠

Full FPA profile⁠