EWX vs XSOE

EWXBState Street SPDR S&P Emerging Markets Small Cap ETF

XSOEAWisdomTree Emerging Markets ex-State-Owned Enterprises Fund

In short

EWX Emerging markets, minus the giants. EWX tracks an index capped at companies under $2 billion in market value, spreading across roughly 3,400 names. The local small-cap slice of EM, not the state-backed mega caps.

XSOE One screen, applied hard: if a government owns more than 20% of a company, XSOE leaves it out. What is left is emerging markets minus the state champions, with country weights pushed back toward the standard EM mix.

Stated mandate

EWX The fund seeks to track the total return of the S&P Emerging Under USD2 Billion Index and provide exposure to small-capitalization equities from emerging countries.

XSOE The fund seeks to track the investment results of emerging-market companies that are not state-owned enterprises, defined as companies with no more than 20% government ownership.

Why people hold it

• EWX The mandate is literal: nothing above $2 billion in market value gets in, so you own local operators instead of the mega caps that anchor standard EM indexes.ssga.com
• Roughly 3,400 holdings across the developing world. No single stock carries this fund, which matters in a corner of the market where research coverage is thin.
• Running since 2008, and it has tracked its benchmark closely, the hard half of the job when your index spans thousands of small caps in dozens of currencies.

• XSOE The 20% government-ownership cutoff is an index rule, not a manager's judgment call, and the fund has run on it since its 2014 launch.wisdomtree.com
• 0.32% a year, under the typical fund in its emerging-markets peer group, for a screen most broad EM funds never apply.
• After the state-owned names come out, the index pushes country weights back toward where they started, so it stays a filtered EM portfolio rather than a country bet.wisdomtree.com
• A multi-billion-dollar fund spread across roughly 800 stocks, and it has tracked its index closely.

Worth knowing

• EWX At 0.65% a year it costs more than the typical emerging-markets fund. Indexing thousands of small foreign stocks is expensive work, and you pay for it every year.
• Thinly traded. Spreads can widen, so order type and time of day matter more here than with a mega-cap EM fund such as BKEM or VEXC.
• EM small caps live off local economies and currencies, which tends to mean bigger swings than a broad EM fund built on multinationals. Payouts come once or twice a year.

• XSOE Cheaper broad EM shelf-mates exist (BKEM at 0.11%, XCEM at 0.16%). The screen is what you are paying the difference for.
• Government stakes cluster in banks and energy in EM, so removing them shifts the sector mix toward private-sector names. Expect it to behave differently from a plain EM index.wisdomtree.com
• No country is excluded, so China stays in the mix, unlike ex-China peers VEXC and XCEM. It also sits among the more volatile funds in its peer group.

Full EWX profile⁠

Full XSOE profile⁠