DFAU vs FFF

DFAUADimensional US Core Equity Market ETF

FFFDFounders 100 ETF

In short

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.

FFF FFF buys one idea: companies still run by the people who built them. It fishes in a pool of the 200 largest US founder-led firms, holds 100 of them, and keeps room to add founder-led IPOs between rebalances.

Stated mandate

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.

FFF The Fund is intended for investors with a generally five-year-or-longer horizon seeking capital appreciation.

Why people hold it

• 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.

• FFF A single-idea portfolio with no drift: at least 90% of assets sit in founder-led US common stocks and REITs, and at least 80% in the 100 biggest names from the founder-led 200.sec.gov
• Up to 20% of assets can go to founder-led IPOs and founder-run companies outside the top 100, so a newly public founder story can be added without waiting on an index reshuffle.sec.gov
• The prospectus is upfront about the shape of the bet: a growth style, capital appreciation as the goal, and a stated five-year-or-longer horizon. Mandate and pitch line up.

Worth knowing

• 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.

• FFF 0.75% a year is toward the pricey end for US equity. The broad core funds sitting at the top of this category (DFAU at 0.12%, AVLC at 0.15%) charge a fraction of it.
• Non-diversified by design, and the premise leans on specific people staying in the chair. Founder exits and single-company news land harder here than in a broad index fund.sec.gov
• It launched in December 2025, so the track record is thin, and the fund is small and lightly traded. Spreads at the point of trade can be wider than with category heavyweights.

Full DFAU profile⁠

Full FFF profile⁠