DFAU vs PQUS

DFAUADimensional US Core Equity Market ETF

PQUSAPictet AI Enhanced US Equity 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.

PQUS An S&P 500 challenger on a short leash: an AI-driven model makes small tilts around the benchmark instead of big bets, and charges 0.22% a year, roughly a third of what the typical active US equity fund costs.

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.

PQUS The Fund seeks long-term capital appreciation. It is an actively managed ETF using an AI-enhanced, low-tracking-error strategy to invest in U.S. equity securities and seek to outperform the S&P 500 Index.

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.

• PQUS Costs 0.22% a year versus a 0.65% median for active US equity funds, and undercuts most competitors that benchmark themselves to the S&P 500 (TSPA, JPEF, HELO all charge more).
• Low tracking error is the whole design. The model tilts around the S&P 500 rather than wandering off it, so the portfolio keeps broad large-cap US exposure while the active work happens at the margins.
• A cheap active wrapper from a European house building out a US lineup: 1940 Act ETF, US equities only, one stated job, which is long-term capital appreciation against the S&P 500.
• Grades in the top quartile of the active US equity funds we cover, with the low fee doing much of the work.

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.

• PQUS A 2026 launch, so the live record is short. Any read on how the model handles a real drawdown rests on limited history.
• Small and thinly traded next to the index giants, so bid-ask spreads and order size matter more here than with a mega-fund.
• Hugging the index cuts both ways: by design, the gap between this and a plain S&P 500 fund stays narrow in either direction. It also targets appreciation, not income.

Full DFAU profile⁠

Full PQUS profile⁠