DYNF vs HEGD

DYNFAiShares U.S. Equity Factor Rotation Active ETF

HEGDCSwan Hedged Equity US Large Cap 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.

HEGD Always invested, always hedged: HEGD owns S&P 500 exposure with long-dated puts sitting under it at all times, funded partly by selling shorter options. Standing coverage, not a seasonal reset, for 0.87% a year.

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.

HEGD The Fund seeks long-term capital appreciation while reducing overall market risk through a hedged U.S. large-cap equity strategy.

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.

• HEGD No outcome period to track. The put hedge stays on and gets rolled by the managers, so there is no annual reset date or day-one entry math like buffer funds ask of you.swanglobalinvestments.comswanglobalinvestments.com 2
• The dampening shows up in the data: one of the lower-risk profiles among actively managed US large-cap ETFs, which is the whole point of paying for a hedge.
• Not a 2020 invention. Randy Swan has run this defined-risk approach since 1997; the ETF wrapper arrived in 2020 with the equity sleeve in plain S&P 500 index ETFs.sec.govswanglobalinvestments.com

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.

• HEGD 0.87% a year, no waiver trimming it, sits above the typical active US large-cap fee. Hedged-equity peer JHDG runs 0.49% net of a waiver through July 31, 2027.
• Hedges cost money. Swan's own shareholder reports are blunt that the fund is unlikely to capture a full up market, since the puts drag when stocks climb.sec.govsec.gov 2
• Income is incidental: distributions are annual. And you own a short list of ETFs and options rather than hundreds of individual stocks.

Full DYNF profile⁠

Full HEGD profile⁠