SMDV vs SPYD

SMDVCProShares S&P SmallCap 600 Dividend Aristocrats ETF

SPYDAState Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 High Dividend ETF

In short

SMDV Dividend-growth screens usually live in large-cap land. SMDV points one at the small-cap Russell 2000 instead, holding about 100 names selected for their dividend growth records, and it has run that way since 2015.

SPYD Most dividend ETFs hunt for companies that keep raising payouts. SPYD skips the courtship and goes straight for the yield: roughly 80 high-dividend names out of the S&P 500, for 0.07% a year.

Stated mandate

SMDV SMDV seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the Russell 2000 Dividend Growth Index.

SPYD The fund seeks to provide returns that generally correspond to the total return of the S&P 500 High Dividend Index before fees and expenses.

Why people hold it

• SMDV A small-cap version of a large-cap idea: it tracks the Russell 2000 Dividend Growth Index, so the sorting rule is payout history rather than size or price momentum.
• Live since 2015 with assets in the hundreds of millions, it is a settled product in a corner of the market where new ideas often come and go.
• About 100 holdings and quarterly distributions make it a compact, income-oriented slice of US small caps, not a 2,000-stock index clone.

• SPYD 0.07% a year against a 0.39% median across dividend-screen peers. It undercuts DGRO's 0.08% and sits a hair above SCHD.
• A pure yield screen, not a growth screen. Where VIG and DGRO buy payout raisers, SPYD takes the high-dividend end of the S&P 500. Different flavor of the same food group.
• Running since 2015, now a multi-billion-dollar fund and one of the more actively traded names in its cohort, so getting in and out is rarely the hard part.
• Pays quarterly and has tracked the S&P 500 High Dividend Index closely, which is the whole job for a fund like this.

Worth knowing

• SMDV At 0.40% a year it runs above the typical fund in its factor group, and far above broad dividend options such as VYM at 0.04%.
• It trades thinly, so spreads and limit orders deserve more attention here than with a headline large-cap dividend fund.
• Narrow by design: roughly 100 small caps chosen on dividend history can move quite differently from the full Russell 2000.

• SPYD About 80 stocks is a narrow slice. Screening on yield pulls the sector mix away from the broad S&P 500, and the ride can be bumpier than the index it comes from.
• A high yield is a ranking, not a promise. The index sorts on payout size, not on how reliably a company has grown or defended that payout.

Full SMDV profile⁠

Full SPYD profile⁠