FTXN vs TPYP

FTXNBFirst Trust Nasdaq Oil & Gas ETF

TPYPCTortoise North American Pipeline 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.

TPYP Most energy ETFs chase drilling. TPYP buys the plumbing: roughly 60 US and Canadian pipeline and midstream companies, tracked through a Tortoise index, in a plain 1940 Act fund that sends a 1099 instead of a partnership K-1.

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.

TPYP The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and total-return performance of the Tortoise North American Pipeline Index.

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.

• TPYP Owns the plumbing rather than the drill bits: roughly 60 pipeline and midstream names across the US and Canada, in one ticker.
• Built as a 1940 Act registered fund, so shareholders get a 1099 at tax time instead of the partnership K-1 that comes with owning MLPs directly.
• Trading since 2015 with a mid-size asset base, and it distributes on a quarterly schedule.

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.

• TPYP The 0.40% fee sits a shade above the typical fund in its energy cohort and well above the cheapest name there, PBOG at 0.13%.
• The benchmark is Tortoise's own North American Pipeline Index, so the fund and the rulebook it follows come from the same house.
• One sector, two countries: energy infrastructure in the US and Canada, with Canadian holdings adding currency exposure.

Full FTXN profile⁠

Full TPYP profile⁠