SEA vs XTN

SEACU.S. Global Sea to Sky Cargo ETF

XTNBState Street SPDR S&P Transportation ETF

In short

SEA One ticker for the whole freight chain: container ships, port operators, and air couriers. Fixed-tier weights keep the giant parcel names from swallowing the portfolio, with a 70/30 tilt toward sea over sky.

XTN Transportation, sliced evenly. XTN spreads roughly 40 airlines, truckers, railroads and freight names across a modified equal-weight index, so small caps get a real vote instead of a rounding error.

Stated mandate

SEA The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the performance of the U.S. Global SEA Index.

XTN The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the total return performance of the S&P Transportation Select Industry Index.

Why people hold it

• SEA Owns freight end to end: marine shipping, port and harbor operators, and air freight and courier names, global and including emerging markets.usglobaletfs.com
• Weights are assigned in fixed tiers (5%, 4% and 2% slots for sea names, 3% for air) rather than by market cap, so one mega-cap courier cannot dominate the book.usglobaletfs.com
• Reconstitutes and rebalances quarterly, so the roughly 30-stock lineup refreshes with the freight cycle instead of drifting for years.usglobaletfs.com
• Trading since 2022 and an unusual pairing of ocean and air cargo in a single US-listed fund; it sits in the upper half of its global thematic peer group.usglobaletfs.com

• XTN Cheapest fare in the transportation aisle: 0.35% a year, against a 0.60% median for the peer group and 0.38% for the larger rival IYT.
• Modified equal weighting spreads the pot across air freight, airlines, airport services, highways and rail, marine, ports, railroads and trucking, not just two megacaps.ssga.com
• State Street has run it since 2011, and it sits in the upper half of its transportation peer group. Pays out quarterly.

Worth knowing

• SEA At 0.60% a year, it runs a touch above the 0.56% median for global thematic funds.
• A small fund that trades lightly, so spreads can be wider than in large sector ETFs.
• The index was built by U.S. Global Indices, a subsidiary of the adviser, with Indxx as calculation agent, and about 30 cyclical freight names make for a concentrated ride.usglobaletfs.com

• XTN Equal weighting tilts toward smaller, more cyclical carriers, so the ride is bumpier than a cap-weighted transport fund's.ssga.com
• About 40 stocks in one slice of industrials. Fuel costs, freight rates and the economic cycle drive it, with no cushion from other sectors.
• Moderately traded rather than heavily, so spreads can widen in fast markets.

Full SEA profile⁠

Full XTN profile⁠