DIVL vs VUS

DIVLCMadison Dividend Value ETF

VUSBVirtus U.S. Dividend ETF

In short

DIVL Most dividend funds screen for headline yield. Madison buys quality payers when their own yield sits unusually high versus its history, which usually means the crowd is nervous. Roughly 40 stocks, actively picked, paid monthly.

VUS An AI-assisted dividend fund at a passive-fund price. A quant model reads sentiment and valuation, humans make the final call, and it charges 0.25%, less than half the typical active US dividend ETF.

Stated mandate

DIVL The Fund seeks current income while also providing an opportunity for capital appreciation.

VUS The Fund seeks current income and, secondarily, long-term capital appreciation.

Why people hold it

• DIVL The screen is spelled out: yield at least 110% of the S&P 500's, market cap above $1 billion, a strong balance sheet, and a dividend the manager expects to keep rising.sec.gov
• Relative yield discipline favors stocks whose dividend yields sit in the top quarter of their own historic range. A valuation trigger, not a raw-yield chase.madisonfunds.commadisonfunds.com 2
• Concentrated by design, around 40 names with at least 80% of assets in dividend payers, and income goes out monthly rather than quarterly.sec.gov

• VUS 0.25% a year, under half the 0.55% median for active US dividend ETFs and cheaper than every top-graded name in the cohort (CGDV, HIDV, MBOX, BGIG, TDVG).
• The engine: a proprietary alpha model using AI-powered language processing for sentiment plus valuation factors. Virtus portfolio managers make the final trading calls.sec.gov
• About 90 US-listed dividend payers, with at least 80% of net assets in them. Focused enough for picks to register, wide enough to spread single-name risk.sec.gov

Worth knowing

• DIVL At 0.65% it runs above the dividend-income median and well above active peers like CGDV (0.33%) and TDVG (0.50%). Stock picking is what you're paying up for.
• Thinly traded next to the category's heavyweights, so the spread is part of your cost of entry, not just the expense ratio.
• Launched in 2023, so the ETF itself is young, though relative yield is Madison's long-running house approach to dividend investing.madisoninvestments.com

• VUS Launched December 2025 with a small asset base and light volume, so spreads can run wider than the cohort's household names and live history on the model is short.
• The prospectus lets the fund put more than 15% of assets in a single sector, so the portfolio can lean hard into a few corners of the market.sec.gov
• Income arrives annually or semiannually rather than monthly, so the cash shows up in lumps.

Full DIVL profile⁠

Full VUS profile⁠