EQTY vs QLTY

EQTYCKovitz Core Equity ETF

QLTYAGMO US Quality ETF

In short

EQTY An active take on quality: Kovitz hunts moats, real profits and free cash flow, and charges 0.99% for the privilege. Launched in December 2022, it reached billion-dollar scale in short order.

QLTY Most quality ETFs run a rules screen. QLTY hands the job to GMO's stock pickers, who buy US companies they judge high quality and chase plain total return. Active conviction, priced like it: 0.50% a year.

Stated mandate

EQTY The December 31, 2025 supplement states that the Fund's investment objective, policies, and principal investment strategies remain unchanged under the proposed new advisory agreement; it does not restate the substantive objective.

QLTY The Fund seeks total return. It is actively managed and invests primarily in equities of U.S. companies that GMO believes are high quality.

Why people hold it

• EQTY Real active management, not an index in disguise: the mandate screens on profitability, quality and value, and can hold names outside the US when the manager wants them.
• Investors showed up early. It crossed billion-dollar territory within a few years of its December 2022 launch, rare air for a boutique active stock fund.
• Sits in the upper half of its quality-and-free-cash-flow peer group, with solid marks for how the portfolio is built and how consistent the strategy has stayed.

• QLTY Actively managed, not index-tracking. GMO's team chooses the US companies it considers high quality, under a straightforward total-return mandate instead of a published factor formula.
• GMO's read on quality leans toward wide moats and free cash flow, so the lineup can look meaningfully different from the index-built quality funds it sits beside.
• Opened in 2023 and already a multi-billion-dollar fund with moderate daily trading and a quarterly distribution schedule.
• The filings match the label: a standard 1940-Act fund holding US equities, screened on quality, no derivative wrapper or offshore complexity.

Worth knowing

• EQTY The fee is the headline trade-off: 0.99% against a 0.57% cohort median, while PSET (0.15%) and ABFL (0.49%) run their own quality playbooks for a fraction of it.
• Big fund, quiet tape. Shares change hands lightly, so spreads can widen when markets get jumpy.
• A December 2025 supplement flagged a proposed new advisory agreement, with the objective and strategies unchanged. Worth knowing who is steering the ship.

• QLTY The 0.50% fee runs above the typical quality-cohort charge, and index-built rivals undercut it hard: QUAL at 0.15%, JQUA at 0.12%.
• No index to fall back on. Everything rides on GMO's stock selection, and the ETF's own record only starts in 2023.
• Mostly on that fee, it sits in the lower half of its US quality peer group even though it does the job its documents describe.

Full EQTY profile⁠

Full QLTY profile⁠