DLN vs SPYD

DLNAWisdomTree U.S. LargeCap Dividend Fund

SPYDAState Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 High Dividend ETF

In short

DLN Most dividend funds sort by yield or by streaks of raises. DLN sorts by dollars: the more cash a company is projected to pay out, the bigger its weight. Roughly 300 US large caps, dividend-weighted since 2006, paid out monthly.

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

DLN The Fund seeks to track the investment results of dividend-paying large-cap companies in the U.S. equity market.

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

• DLN Weights holdings by projected cash dividends, not yield, so the biggest actual payers get the biggest slice. A different sort order than most large-cap dividend funds.sec.gov
• At 0.28% a year, it undercuts the typical fund in its dividend-screen peer group, where the median runs 0.39%.
• Pays monthly rather than quarterly, and has run the same dividend-weighted playbook since its 2006 launch.
• A multi-billion-dollar fund that stays close to its stated index, and one of the stronger implementations in the US dividend-screen group.

• 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

• DLN Cheap for its cohort, not cheap outright: VIG, SCHD and DGRO all charge under a tenth of a percent.
• Dividend dollars drive the weights, so the largest payers dominate. No dividend-growth-streak or quality screen sits behind the weighting.sec.gov
• Weights are set once a year at the index measurement date, so between resets the mix drifts with share prices.sec.gov

• 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 DLN profile⁠

Full SPYD profile⁠