RSPU vs VPU

RSPUCInvesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Utilities ETF

VPUBVanguard Utilities ETF

In short

RSPU Utilities without one giant hogging the wheel. RSPU equal-weights the S&P 500's utility stocks, so a mid-sized water company carries about the same load as the biggest power name. It has been running this way since 2006.

VPU Utilities, the whole sector, not just the S&P 500 slice. VPU tracks an index that reaches past the megacap names into mid and small utilities, about 70 in all, for 0.09% a year. Vanguard has run it since 2004.

Stated mandate

RSPU The fund seeks to track an index that equally weights the common stocks of S&P 500 companies classified in the utilities sector.

VPU The fund seeks to track the MSCI US Investable Market Utilities 25/50 Index through a primarily full-replication, passively managed strategy.

Why people hold it

• RSPU Equal weighting is the whole point: roughly 30 S&P 500 utilities each get about the same slice, so no single mega-cap utility dominates the portfolio.invesco.com
• It does what the label says: S&P 500 utilities, index-tracked, no derivatives or off-menu holdings, and it has stayed close to its benchmark.
• A long track record for a niche idea. Launched in 2006, it pays distributions quarterly.

• VPU At 0.09% a year, it costs roughly a quarter of the median utilities fund fee. In a sector where the holdings barely differ between funds, the fee is most of the fight.
• Its MSCI Investable Market benchmark spans large, mid and small US utilities. XLU, by contrast, drafts only from the S&P 500 universe, so the smaller names never appear.vanguard.comssga.com
• The index's 25/50 caps exist to keep any single issuer under 25% and the pile of 5%-plus names under half the fund, a guardrail in a sector with a few giants.msci.com
• Plain full replication since 2004: buy the index, hold the index. Tracking here has been among the tightest in the US utilities group.

Worth knowing

• RSPU The equal-weight build carries a price: 0.40% a year, versus the cheapest utilities trackers in the group (XLU, FUTY, VPU), which charge well under a tenth of a percent.
• It trades thinly next to the household-name utilities funds, which can mean wider bid-ask spreads.
• One sector, about 30 names, concentrated by design. Flat weighting also leans harder on smaller utilities than a size-weighted fund does.

• VPU One sector, about 70 stocks. It swings on rate expectations and regulator decisions, with nothing outside utilities to cushion it.
• XLU and FUTY shave the fee to 0.08%, and XLU is the more heavily traded ticker if order size matters to you.
• Income arrives quarterly, not monthly, so the cash lands in four lumps a year.

Full RSPU profile⁠

Full VPU profile⁠