SDY vs WDIV

SDYAState Street SPDR S&P Dividend ETF

WDIVBState Street SPDR S&P Global Dividend ETF

In short

SDY The aristocrat fund that doesn't stop at the S&P 500. It fishes the whole S&P Composite 1500 for companies with at least 20 straight years of dividend increases, then weights them by yield, so the fattest payers get the biggest seats.

WDIV Dividend aristocrats with a passport. WDIV screens the world for companies that have held or raised payouts for at least a decade, buys the top yielders, and caps how much any one stock, sector or country can matter.

Stated mandate

SDY The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the total return of the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. The index selects S&P Composite 1500 companies with at least 20 consecutive years of dividend increases and weights them by indicated yield.

WDIV The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the total return of the S&P Global Dividend Aristocrats Index.

Why people hold it

• SDY The bar is 20 consecutive years of dividend increases, drawn from the S&P Composite 1500, so seasoned mid- and small-cap raisers can make the cut alongside megacaps.ssga.com
• Weighting is by indicated yield, not market cap. Money flows toward the higher-yielding survivors of the screen rather than the biggest companies in it.ssga.com
• 0.35% a year, below the typical fee among dividend aristocrat index funds, and it holds roughly 160 names rather than a token handful.
• Trading since 2005, now a multi-billion-dollar fund that has stayed tight to its index. One of the strongest implementations in its aristocrat peer group.

• WDIV The aristocrat idea, exported. NOBL's bar is 25 straight years of US dividend hikes; WDIV's is 10 years of stable or rising payouts anywhere in the S&P Global BMI, a far bigger pond.ssga.comproshares.com
• Diversification is written into the rulebook: 3% cap per stock, 25% ceiling per sector and per country, and no more than 20 names from any single country.ssga.com
• Running since 2013 at 0.40%, level with the median fee in its dividend-aristocrat peer group, and it sits in the upper half of that group on our review.
• A compact book of roughly 90 global dividend payers, distributing quarterly.

Worth knowing

• SDY Yield weighting is a tilt, not a neutral stance: the largest positions are the highest payers, which pulls the portfolio toward slower-growth, high-payout corners of the market.
• Not the cheap seat in the category. Sector-neutral dividend indexing is available for a fraction of the fee, for example SPDG at 0.05%.
• Distributions land quarterly, not monthly, and a long raise streak describes a company's past behavior, not a commitment.

• WDIV 0.40% is the going rate among aristocrat funds, but plainer dividend index options in the same group cost far less (SPDG runs 0.05%).
• Thinly traded next to the headline US dividend names, so spreads can be wider than the sticker fee suggests.
• It is a yield-first screen on foreign shares: currency moves feed into returns, and a decade of merely stable dividends clears the bar alongside real growth.ssga.com

Full SDY profile⁠

Full WDIV profile⁠