SPDG vs SPYD

SPDGBState Street SPDR Portfolio S&P Sector Neutral Dividend ETF

SPYDAState Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 High Dividend ETF

In short

SPDG The dividend-aristocrat idea at a discount-rack price. SPDG tracks a sector-neutral S&P index of long-running dividend payers for 0.05% a year, a sliver of what the household names in this corner charge.

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

SPDG The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the total return of the S&P Sector-Neutral High Yield Dividend Aristocrats 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

• SPDG 0.05% a year, against a 0.40% median in its dividend-aristocrat peer group and the 0.35% charged by the older, bigger names SDY and NOBL.
• Sector-neutral by construction: the index constrains sector weights instead of letting a yield screen pile the portfolio into whichever corner pays most. Roughly 300 stocks.ssga.com
• Simple plumbing: US stocks, one published S&P index, quarterly distributions. No options overlay, no leverage, no active stock picking.
• Sits in the upper half of its aristocrat peer group in our review, largely because the fee is a fraction of the cohort's.

• 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

• SPDG Small asset base and thin trading. Spreads can be wider than the crowded aristocrat funds, which matters more on larger orders than on small ones.
• Launched in 2023, so the record is short next to peers that have been running for well over a decade.
• Income here is a pass-through, not a policy: payouts arrive quarterly and rise or fall with what the underlying companies actually declare.

• 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 SPDG profile⁠

Full SPYD profile⁠