DGRO vs SPYD

DGROAiShares Core Dividend Growth ETF

SPYDAState Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 High Dividend ETF

In short

DGRO BlackRock's dividend-growth screen casts a wider net than most: five straight years of raises rather than ten, plus a payout-ratio cap that filters out stretched payers. About 400 US dividend raisers, large through small cap, for 0.08% a year.

SPYD Most dividend ETFs hunt for companies that keep raising payouts. SPYD skips the courtship and goes straight for the yield: roughly 80 high-dividend names out of the S&P 500, for 0.07% a year.

Stated mandate

DGRO The fund seeks to follow an index of U.S. equities whose dividends have grown consistently.

SPYD The fund seeks to provide returns that generally correspond to the total return of the S&P 500 High Dividend Index before fees and expenses.

Why people hold it

• DGRO Costs 0.08% a year, a small fraction of the typical fee among US dividend-screen ETFs.
• The screen has teeth: a qualified dividend, five years of uninterrupted dividend growth, a payout ratio under 75%, and the top decile of yielders cut before the other tests run.ishares.com
• Roughly 400 names across large, mid and small caps, weighted by the dividend dollars each company pays rather than by market cap.ishares.comcib.barclays
• Tracks the Morningstar US Dividend Growth Index about as tightly as this group gets, and it's an actively traded, multi-billion-dollar fund that has run since 2014.

• SPYD 0.07% a year against a 0.39% median across dividend-screen peers. It undercuts DGRO's 0.08% and sits a hair above SCHD.
• A pure yield screen, not a growth screen. Where VIG and DGRO buy payout raisers, SPYD takes the high-dividend end of the S&P 500. Different flavor of the same food group.
• Running since 2015, now a multi-billion-dollar fund and one of the more actively traded names in its cohort, so getting in and out is rarely the hard part.
• Pays quarterly and has tracked the S&P 500 High Dividend Index closely, which is the whole job for a fund like this.

Worth knowing

• DGRO Chopping the highest-yielding decile is deliberate: this is built around payout growth and dividend durability, not the fattest current yield on the shelf.ishares.com
• Only dividend payers qualify, so some of the market's biggest non-paying growth companies sit outside the portfolio by rule.ishares.com
• Income arrives quarterly, not monthly, and this is plain US stock exposure: no buffer, no hedge, full equity risk.

• SPYD About 80 stocks is a narrow slice. Screening on yield pulls the sector mix away from the broad S&P 500, and the ride can be bumpier than the index it comes from.
• A high yield is a ranking, not a promise. The index sorts on payout size, not on how reliably a company has grown or defended that payout.

Full DGRO profile⁠

Full SPYD profile⁠