DTD vs SPYD

DTDAWisdomTree U.S. Total Dividend Fund

SPYDAState Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 High Dividend ETF

In short

DTD A 2006 original that skips the usual filters: no high-yield hunt, no dividend-growth streak test. DTD holds roughly 800 US dividend payers, from mega caps down to small, and reshuffles once 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

DTD The Fund uses a passive indexing approach intended to track the price and yield performance of the WisdomTree U.S. Total Dividend Index before fees and expenses.

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

• DTD Owns the broad dividend-paying US market in one ticket, roughly 800 names across the cap range, not a narrow high-yield slice.wisdomtree.comsec.gov
• Charges 0.28% a year, under the typical US dividend-screen fund, and sits in the upper tier of that large peer group.
• Pays monthly and has been running since 2006, through several full market cycles, tracking its index closely.

• 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

• DTD Thinly traded next to category giants like SCHD and VIG, so spreads can run wider, which bites most on large or rushed orders.
• Cheap for the category, but SCHD, VIG and DGRO each charge a fraction of 0.28%.
• The index adds names only at its annual December rebalance, so the lineup can trail changes in who pays what.sec.govsec.gov 2

• 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 DTD profile⁠

Full SPYD profile⁠