ILCG vs IMCG

ILCGAiShares Morningstar Growth ETF

IMCGAiShares Morningstar Mid-Cap Growth ETF

In short

ILCG Growth by Morningstar's rulebook. A 2004-vintage iShares fund that screens large and mid caps for above-average earnings, sales, cash-flow and book-value growth, and charges four basis points to do it.

IMCG Growth investing usually means megacaps. IMCG works the middle of the market instead: roughly 300 mid-cap growth names, indexed since 2004, for six basis points a year.

Stated mandate

ILCG The fund aims to follow an index of U.S. large- and mid-cap stocks chosen for above-average earnings, sales, cash-flow, and book-value growth.

IMCG The Fund seeks to track an index of U.S. mid-capitalization equities with growth characteristics. Its strategy uses representative sampling and generally invests at least 80% of assets in securities from the Underlying Index.

Why people hold it

• ILCG 0.04% a year. The typical fund in its factor peer group charges roughly eight times that, so almost none of the return leaks out the fee door.
• Uses Morningstar's growth definition (earnings, sales, cash flow, book value) rather than S&P's or Russell's, and reaches into mid caps, not just the S&P 500.ishares.com
• Trading since 2004, a multi-billion-dollar fund holding roughly 300 stocks. Long-running plumbing, not a launch-week experiment.
• Tracking has been tight, and the fund sits in the upper half of its factor cohort overall, with cost doing much of the heavy lifting.

• IMCG 0.06% a year, one third of the 0.18% median for its growth-fund peer group. Mid-cap indexing at large-cap-index prices.
• The growth leaderboard is stacked with large-cap funds (VUG, SCHG, SPYG, VONG). IMCG covers the middle instead, holding about 300 mid-cap growth names.
• Sticks close to the Morningstar mid-cap growth index it follows, one of the tighter tracking jobs in its peer group.
• Running since 2004 under the iShares roof, with a multi-billion-dollar asset base behind it.

Worth knowing

• ILCG Pure growth means no value ballast, and the ride has been bumpier than most funds in its factor group. The style can sit out of favor for long stretches.
• Concentration runs high for the cohort: cap-weighted growth screens funnel a big share of the fund into the same handful of mega-cap names.
• Moderately traded, not a tape leader. Sibling IUSG applies S&P's growth definition at the same 0.04%, so the pick is which index rulebook you prefer.

• IMCG Moderately traded rather than heavily traded, so bid-ask spreads can run wider than the megacap growth ETFs sitting beside it in the category.
• This is a size-and-style bet. Mid-cap growth companies tend to move more sharply than the broad market, in both directions.
• Distributions land quarterly, but a growth screen is not built around income.

Full ILCG profile⁠

Full IMCG profile⁠