DFAU vs SURI

DFAUADimensional US Core Equity Market ETF

SURIFSimplify Propel Opportunities 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.

SURI A specialist healthcare stock-picker in an ETF shell. Simplify hands the keys to sub-adviser Propel, whose science team hunts global biotech, pharma, health tech and life-science names it believes investors have overlooked.

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.

SURI The Fund seeks long-term 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.

• SURI A scientist's mandate, not an index screen: Propel sub-advises, using health sciences expertise to pick the names, and the fund is actively managed rather than tracking a benchmark.simplify.us
• Narrow on purpose: biotech, pharma, health care technology and life science tools, global in reach, with long-term capital appreciation as the stated objective.
• Live since 2023, so there is a real record of this team's picks to inspect instead of a backtest, inside standard 1940 Act ETF plumbing that pays quarterly.

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.

• SURI 2.56% net of a waiver through May 31, 2027, against 2.81% gross, well above the category median. Concentrated specialist research is what that fee buys.
• Thinly traded and modest in size, so getting in and out can cost more than with a broad index ETF.
• One slice of one sector, with no index anchoring it, means outcomes ride on the sub-adviser's judgment.

Full DFAU profile⁠

Full SURI profile⁠