FNK vs VTV

FNKCFirst Trust Mid Cap Value AlphaDEX Fund

VTVAVanguard Morningstar Value ETF

In short

FNK Not a plain value index fund: the AlphaDEX screen ranks mid-cap value stocks on growth and value metrics, keeps a subset and weights by rank rather than size. A quant strategy in an index wrapper, priced closer to active.

VTV Value investing for three cents on every hundred dollars a year. Since 2004, VTV has run a passive, fully invested portfolio of roughly 300 large US companies that screen cheap, at a fee near the industry floor.

Stated mandate

FNK The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the Nasdaq AlphaDEX Mid Cap Value Index. The index uses AlphaDEX to select and weight securities from the Nasdaq US 600 Mid Cap Value Index.

VTV The fund seeks to track a large-capitalization U.S. value-stock benchmark through passive indexing and substantial replication of that index.

Why people hold it

• FNK Rank drives weight, not market cap: the AlphaDEX screen scores stocks on growth and value metrics, then tiers them, so size alone doesn't buy a big slot.ftportfolios.comotcmarkets.com
• Roughly 230 mid-cap names, so no single stock steers the portfolio.
• Running since 2011, one of the longer-lived rules-based factor funds, and it distributes quarterly.

• VTV 0.03% a year, about a sixth of the 0.18% median for US value funds. Cost is the part of the outcome the fund actually controls.
• Same recipe, very different sticker: PRXV tracks the same declared value index and charges 0.36%, twelve times VTV's fee.
• Passively managed, full replication, fully invested. No manager hunches, no cash sitting idle, and the fund has tracked its benchmark closely.vanguard.com
• One of the largest and most actively traded funds in the US value aisle, the kind of scale that keeps bid-ask spreads thin for ordinary orders.

Worth knowing

• FNK At 0.74% a year it sits at the pricey end of the factor aisle (VONV charges 0.06%, FNDX 0.25%), and that cost is what keeps it in the back of its peer group.
• Thinly traded, so spreads can run wider than on household-name index ETFs; the cost of getting in and out matters more here.
• Value label, but the screen scores growth metrics too, so the basket won't always look like a textbook value fund.ftportfolios.com

• VTV Large caps only, about 300 of them. Cheap mid- and small-cap stocks live in separate funds (VOE, VTWV), so this is one slice of value, not the whole market.
• It is a value screen by design, so the priciest fast growers are largely filtered out. In growth-led stretches it can move very differently from a total-market fund.
• Income arrives quarterly, in four instalments rather than a monthly drip.

Full FNK profile⁠

Full VTV profile⁠