FTXH vs PPH

FTXHBFirst Trust Nasdaq Pharmaceuticals ETF

PPHAVanEck Pharmaceutical ETF

In short

FTXH Most pharma funds just size positions by market cap. FTXH screens US pharma stocks for liquidity, then ranks and weights them on value, momentum and profitability, so the biggest drugmaker isn't automatically the biggest holding.

PPH About two dozen US-listed drugmakers in one ticker, tracking the MVIS US Listed Pharmaceutical 25 Index since 2011. VanEck charges well under the pharma-fund median to run it.

Stated mandate

FTXH The fund seeks returns broadly matching the price and yield of the Nasdaq US Smart PharmaceuticalsTM Index before expenses. It uses an indexing approach intended to replicate that index’s holdings and weights, targeting 95% correlation, without assuring success.

PPH The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the performance of the MVIS US Listed Pharmaceutical 25 Index, which covers companies involved in pharmaceutical research and development, production, marketing, and sales.

Why people hold it

• FTXH Weights follow a factor scorecard (value, momentum, profitability) rather than company size, a different recipe from the plain cap-weighted pharma funds it sits beside.ftportfolios.com
• Stays in its lane: US pharmaceutical companies, not a broad health care blend of biotech, device makers and insurers.ftportfolios.com
• Live since 2016 with a few hundred million in assets, it changes hands actively and pays distributions quarterly.
• Index replication is the whole job here, and the fund has kept close to the Nasdaq US Smart Pharmaceuticals Index it advertises.ftportfolios.com

• PPH Costs 0.36% a year against a 0.57% median for pharma ETFs, undercutting peers like PJP and FTXH.
• Focused by design: the index tracks US-listed pharmaceutical companies (research, production, marketing, sales) rather than the whole health care aisle.vaneck.com
• Trading since 2011, one of the veterans of the pharma shelf, and it sits in the top quartile of its peer group on our review.
• Pays out quarterly, and it is a moderately traded fund, so getting in and out is usually straightforward.

Worth knowing

• FTXH The screen costs money: 0.60% a year, above the pharma-ETF median and well above cap-weighted rivals PPH (0.36%) and XPH (0.35%).
• About 50 names in a single sector. Patent rulings, trial results and drug-pricing headlines land with full force.
• Factor weighting cuts both ways: the lineup can look quite different from a standard cap-weighted pharma benchmark, and behave differently too.

• PPH Around 26 holdings. One company's trial result or patent cliff carries real weight in a basket this tight.
• Single-sector health care exposure: drug pricing politics and regulation land on the whole basket at once, with nothing else to cushion it.
• The fee edge over the category is real, but XPH sits at 0.35%, so cost alone is not what separates these two.

Full FTXH profile⁠

Full PPH profile⁠