DON vs SPYD

DONBWisdomTree U.S. MidCap Dividend Fund

SPYDAState Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 High Dividend ETF

In short

DON Most dividend funds read like a mega-cap roll call. DON deletes the 300 largest payers first, then weights what's left by the dollars of dividends each company is projected to pay. Mid-cap income, run the same way since 2006.

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

DON The Fund seeks to track the price and yield performance of dividend-paying mid-capitalization companies in the U.S. equity market. It uses passive indexing and generally invests in Index constituents or economically similar investments.

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

• DON The index removes the 300 largest U.S. dividend payers before building, so DON holds mid-cap names that mega-cap-heavy dividend funds mostly skip.wisdomtree.comsec.gov
• Weights come from projected cash dividends, not market cap, and any one sector is capped at 25% on the annual screening date.sec.gov
• Plain passive indexing: roughly 300 holdings, tracking that has stayed close to its index, and cash out the door monthly.
• Live since 2006 and now a multi-billion-dollar fund, so the strategy has a long paper trail rather than a launch-week backtest.

• 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

• DON The 0.38% fee matches the median for dividend-screen funds but runs well above large-cap staples like VIG (0.04%) and SCHD (0.06%).
• Mid-cap payers tend to move more than mega-cap stalwarts, and risk is the softest part of this fund's profile inside its dividend peer group.
• The fund is classified as non-diversified, and sector weights can drift above that 25% cap between annual screenings.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 DON profile⁠

Full SPYD profile⁠