DYNF vs ESN

DYNFAiShares U.S. Equity Factor Rotation Active ETF

ESNBEssential 40 Stock ETF

In short

DYNF Most factor funds make you pick a lane: value, momentum, quality. DYNF rotates across five styles instead, letting a factor model decide which one leads, and charges an index-fund-ish 0.26% to do it.

ESN A 40-stock take on US large caps. KKM's Essential 40 Stock ETF tracks a single purpose-built index, giving you a compact, rules-based basket in a corner of the market dominated by funds that own hundreds of names.

Stated mandate

DYNF The Fund seeks to outperform the U.S. equity market through diversified, tactical exposure to style factors using a factor rotation model.

ESN The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the performance of the Essential 40 Stock Index. It normally invests at least 80% of net assets in common stocks comprising that Index.

Why people hold it

• DYNF Five style factors in one ticket (value, quality, momentum, growth, low volatility), reweighted by a rotation model rather than locked to a single tilt.
• 0.26% is well under half the median fee in its active US equity peer group, which is unusual pricing for a strategy with a human-supervised model behind it.
• A multi-billion-dollar fund and one of the more actively traded names in its category, so getting in and out rarely becomes the hard part. Pays quarterly.
• Running since 2019 under one of the biggest ETF shops, and it stands among the strongest overall implementations in the active US equity group we track.

• ESN Rules-based by design: normally at least 80% of net assets sits in the index's common stocks, so the playbook is written down rather than left to a manager's mood.
• Nothing else in our active US equity coverage tracks the Essential 40 Stock Index, so this exposure is hard to duplicate with another off-the-shelf fund.
• Plain plumbing: a standard 1940 Act fund holding US common stocks, with no leverage, no derivatives overlay and no structural quirks to decode.
• Lands in the top quartile of the several hundred active US equity ETFs we grade, a strong showing for a fund this new.

Worth knowing

• DYNF The yardstick isn't the S&P 500: it's a custom blend of 80% MSCI USA and 20% MSCI USA Minimum Volatility, so a low-vol tilt is baked into the benchmark itself.
• Active by design. The factor mix shifts, the book runs to a couple hundred stocks, and a rotation call can leave it out of step with a plain US market index fund.
• Cheap for active, not the cheapest shelf: systematic peers DFAU (0.12%), AVLC (0.15%), DFAC (0.17%) and FELC (0.18%) all undercut it on fee.

• ESN At 0.70% a year it runs above the roughly 0.65% typical for active US equity ETFs, and multiples of core rivals like DFAU (0.12%) and AVLC (0.15%).
• Launched in October 2024, so the history is short and there is not yet enough published data to measure how tightly it hugs its index.
• Forty names means every holding carries real weight, a different ride from a 500-stock core fund. Trading is moderate rather than heavy, so limit orders earn their keep.

Full DYNF profile⁠

Full ESN profile⁠