FGM vs SPEU

FGMCFirst Trust Germany AlphaDEX Fund

SPEUAState Street SPDR Portfolio Europe ETF

In short

FGM Most Germany ETFs hand you the blue chips in market-cap order. FGM screens German stocks on growth and value marks and weights them by rank instead, landing on roughly 40 names. A different Germany, at a premium price.

SPEU Europe in one line item, priced like a core holding. A 0.07% fee buys the whole STOXX Europe Total Market Index, large caps down to small, in a fund that has been running since 2002.

Stated mandate

FGM The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the Nasdaq AlphaDEX® GermanyTM Index, an equity index focused on companies assigned to Germany.

SPEU The fund seeks to deliver returns generally corresponding to the total return of the STOXX Europe Total Market Index.

Why people hold it

• FGM Not a cap-weighted rerun: the AlphaDEX screen ranks German companies on growth and value measures, then weights by rank rather than size.
• Roughly 40 holdings, so the screen actually shows up in the portfolio instead of getting diluted across a broad market list.
• Running since 2012 and still doing one job: German equities, one named index, tracked closely.

• SPEU Charges 0.07% a year, versus a 0.28% median for its peer group. That is core-index pricing on a single-region fund.
• Total-market index, not a blue-chip list: over a thousand western European stocks spanning large, mid and small caps.
• Launched in 2002, so it has run through multiple European market cycles under State Street.
• Mandate is plain and literal: match the total return of one published European index, with no sector or country tilts bolted on.

Worth knowing

• FGM At 0.80% a year it sits above most single-country Europe funds, and four times the 0.20% charged by the cheapest German blue-chip tracker (DAX).
• A small fund that trades lightly next to the big country ETFs, so spreads and order size are worth watching.
• One country, one screen, few dozen stocks: the ride follows Germany's cycle and the factor tilt, not a diversified basket.

• SPEU Trading is light next to the giant international funds. Limit orders matter more here, and spreads can widen when volume is thin.
• Europe only. Broad international peers like VEU and IXUS cover Asia and emerging markets too, at 0.04% and 0.07%.
• Holdings trade in euros, pounds and francs, so currency swings against the dollar move your return alongside the stocks.

Full FGM profile⁠

Full SPEU profile⁠