EQAL vs GSEW

EQALAInvesco Russell 1000 Equal Weight ETF

GSEWAGoldman Sachs Equal Weight U.S. Large Cap Equity ETF

In short

EQAL Most equal-weight funds flatten the stocks and let sector weights land wherever the stock count falls. EQAL flattens the sectors first, then the names inside each one, across roughly 1,000 US large and mid caps.

GSEW Equal weight without the equal-weight markup. GSEW spreads roughly 500 US large caps into same-size slots and charges 0.09%, well under half the typical fee in its corner of the market.

Stated mandate

EQAL The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the Russell 1000 Equal Weight Index by investing primarily in securities that comprise its underlying index.

GSEW The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the Solactive US Large Cap Equal Weight Index.

Why people hold it

• EQAL Two layers of leveling: nine sector groups each get the same slice, then every stock inside a sector gets the same slice. Sector concentration is reset by design, not inherited from the parent index.invesco.com
• Roughly 1,000 holdings drawn from the Russell 1000, so the portfolio reaches well past the mega-cap tier and no handful of giants sets the tone.
• A 0.20% expense ratio, right at the middle of the equal-weight group, on a methodology this fund has run since its 2014 launch.
• The portfolio hews tightly to the equal-weight mandate it advertises, and the fund sits in the upper half of its peer group overall.

• GSEW 0.09% a year against a 0.20% median for equal-weight US large-cap peers. Only iShares' EUSA matches the price.
• Every name gets the same slot, so the largest megacap counts no more than the 500th holding. A genuinely different shape than a cap-weighted S&P fund.gsam.com
• Hugs the Solactive US Large Cap Equal Weight Index closely, one of the tightest index implementations in its peer group.
• Trading since 2017 and now a multi-billion-dollar fund, so this is an established option rather than a recent launch.

Worth knowing

• EQAL Thinly traded next to the household names of equal weight. Spreads and limit orders matter more here than in a heavily traded fund.
• Cheaper equal-weight large-cap options exist: GSEW and EUSA both charge 0.09%, less than half of EQAL's fee.
• Flattening sectors and stocks means the fund keeps trimming what has run and adding to what has lagged, and it carries more mid-cap exposure than a cap-weighted large-cap fund.invesco.com

• GSEW Even weights pull the mix toward the smaller members of the large-cap universe and away from megacap concentration, which has made for a bumpier ride than cap-weighted peers.
• Resetting to equal weight means more turnover than a leave-it-alone cap-weighted index, and income lands quarterly rather than monthly.
• Moderately traded, not one of the volume giants of the category, so spreads can widen outside the busiest parts of the session.

Full EQAL profile⁠

Full GSEW profile⁠