FTXN vs IEZ

FTXNBFirst Trust Nasdaq Oil & Gas ETF

IEZCiShares U.S. Oil Equipment & Services ETF

In short

FTXN Most oil and gas ETFs just hand you the biggest drillers by size. FTXN screens the US oil and gas patch on factor signals instead, holding about 40 names weighted by those scores. A rules-based tilt on a famously cyclical sector.

IEZ The picks-and-shovels corner of energy. IEZ owns the US equipment makers, drillers and service contractors that get paid when oil companies spend, rather than the producers pumping the barrels. Roughly 30 names, running since 2006.

Stated mandate

FTXN The Fund seeks to track the performance of the Nasdaq US Smart Oil & Gas Index before fees and expenses through an indexing strategy.

IEZ The fund seeks to follow an index of U.S. companies operating in the oil equipment and services sector.

Why people hold it

• FTXN The "Smart" in the index name is literal: holdings are selected and sized by factor ranking, not market cap alone, so the largest producer doesn't automatically get the largest slot.ftportfolios.com
• About 40 holdings, all oil and gas. No utilities, no renewables filler, no diluting the theme you actually came for.ftportfolios.com
• Running since 2016 and it sticks tightly to the Nasdaq index it names in its prospectus. What the documents promise is what the portfolio delivers.
• Trades actively for a niche sector fund, so getting in and out is rarely the hard part.

• IEZ Owns the service side of oil rather than the barrels: the index tracks US oil equipment and services companies, so the integrated majors most energy funds lean on sit outside it.ishares.com
• Live since 2006 under the iShares roof, with a multi-hundred-million-dollar asset base and active daily trading.
• Costs 0.37% a year, level with the typical fund in this energy cohort, and distributes quarterly.

Worth knowing

• FTXN 0.60% a year is the price of the factor machinery. Plain cap-weighted rivals like XOP (0.35%) and IEO (0.37%) charge roughly half that for the same corner of the market.
• Concentrated, single-sector equity: the ride tends to follow the price of the barrel, with no defensive ballast when energy turns.
• A mid-sized fund, not one of the category's household-name giants, and it pays distributions quarterly rather than monthly.

• IEZ About 30 stocks in one cyclical niche. Service and equipment revenue follows drilling budgets, so swings tend to run sharper than a broad energy fund's.
• Cheaper doors exist in the same cohort: OIH at 0.35% and PBOG at 0.13%, though each tracks a different slice of energy.
• On our overall read it lands in the lower half of its energy peer group, where several rivals chase similar ground under different index rules.

Full FTXN profile⁠

Full IEZ profile⁠