FLGB vs FSZ

FLGBAFranklin FTSE United Kingdom ETF

FSZCFirst Trust Switzerland AlphaDEX Fund

In short

FLGB Britain in one ticker for nine basis points. Franklin's UK tracker follows a capped FTSE index of roughly 110 British companies and charges a small fraction of what the typical index fund in its peer group costs.

FSZ A Switzerland fund that doesn't just mirror the Swiss market. FSZ runs Swiss stocks through First Trust's AlphaDEX growth-and-value rules and lands on about 40 names, so the screen shapes results as much as the country does.

Stated mandate

FLGB The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the performance of the FTSE UK RIC Capped Index.

FSZ The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and yield of the Nasdaq AlphaDEX® SwitzerlandTM Index. That index selects and weights Swiss securities from the Nasdaq SwitzerlandTM Index using AlphaDEX criteria.

Why people hold it

• FLGB 0.09% a year, a fraction of the median fee across the index trackers we grade. Cheap is the whole pitch for single-country beta, and this one delivers it.
• One trade, roughly 110 UK companies. A passive, rules-based mandate tied to the FTSE UK RIC Capped Index, running since its 2017 launch.
• Stands in the top quartile of its plain-index-wrapper peer group, and the mandate data behind that read is high confidence.

• FSZ AlphaDEX selects and weights Swiss stocks on growth and value rules, ending at about 40 names rather than a cap-weighted copy of the market.ftportfolios.com
• Live since 2012, so the screen has a long public record across real market cycles instead of a backtest.
• Plain mandate, no moving parts: one country, one published index, quarterly distributions, standard 1940 Act fund wrapper.

Worth knowing

• FLGB Single-country by design: UK listings only, so there is no cushion from other markets inside the fund. Broad global trackers like VT spread that bet differently.
• Moderately traded rather than a volume monster, so limit orders are the sane way in and out.
• Distributions arrive once or twice a year, not monthly. Income lands in lumps.

• FSZ At 0.80% a year, this sits at the expensive end of single-country developed funds; cohort peers such as FLKR and FLAU charge a small fraction of that.
• A small asset base and thin trading mean spreads can be wide, so order size and timing matter more here than in a mainstream country fund.
• About 40 screened names can drift a long way from the broad Swiss market, in either direction.

Full FLGB profile⁠

Full FSZ profile⁠