DFAU vs KEAT

DFAUADimensional US Core Equity Market ETF

KEATDKeating Active 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.

KEAT A boutique stock picker in a corner of the market dominated by giant quant shops. Keating runs a hand-built equity portfolio chasing both income and growth, and charges active-management prices to do it.

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.

KEAT The Fund seeks total return through income and 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.

• KEAT Genuinely active, not an index in disguise: holdings come from fundamental research, one company at a time, rather than a rules-based screen.
• A two-sided mandate. It targets total return from income and capital appreciation, and distributions are paid on a quarterly schedule.
• Wide toolkit for an equity fund: common stock, preferred shares, REITs and depositary receipts all sit inside the mandate, so the income can come from more than one place.

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.

• KEAT The 0.85% fee sits above the typical active US equity fund at 0.65%, and well above the cohort's highest-rated names: DFAU at 0.12%, AVLC at 0.15%, DFAC at 0.17%.
• Thinly traded and small. Bid-ask spreads tend to be wider on funds like this, which adds a cost that never shows up in the expense ratio.
• Launched in 2024, so the record is short. There is not yet enough history to see how the manager's picks behave across a full market cycle.

Full DFAU profile⁠

Full KEAT profile⁠