SPY vs SPYM

SPYAState Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF

SPYMAState Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF

In short

SPY The 1993 original, and still the ticker the market trades through. Same roughly 500 S&P 500 names as its cheaper cousins; the edge here is the crowd around it, not the fee.

SPYM State Street's budget-priced S&P 500 tracker: the same 500 large caps as its famous sibling, for 0.02% a year, the lowest fee in its S&P 500 peer group. Running since 2005 and now one of the category's giants.

Stated mandate

SPY The fund seeks to track, before expenses, the price and yield performance of the S&P 500 Index.

SPYM The fund seeks to track the total return of the S&P 500 Index before fees and expenses, providing broad exposure to U.S. large-cap equities.

Why people hold it

• SPY One of the most heavily traded funds in the market, and one of the largest. That depth is why desks treat it as the default way to move S&P 500 exposure.
• Its stated job is to track the S&P 500 before expenses, and it hews to that benchmark about as closely as anything in its peer group.
• At 0.09% a year it still undercuts the typical S&P 500 wrapper in its cohort, and it lands in the upper half of that group overall.

• SPYM 0.02% a year, the cheapest fee in its S&P 500 cohort, against a 0.15% median for the group. Two dollars a year per $10,000 invested.
• Same S&P 500 index as State Street's flagship SPY (0.09%), for a fraction of the fee, and a basis point under VOO and IVV.
• Tracks the index tightly: gaps between fund and benchmark are among the smallest in its peer group, which is the whole job of an index wrapper.
• Live since 2005, now one of the largest and most heavily traded funds in the category. Distributions land quarterly.

Worth knowing

• SPY That liquidity has a price: VOO, IVV and SPYM track the same index for a few basis points, and the fee gap compounds over a long hold.
• It is a unit investment trust, the older 1993-vintage wrapper: it holds the index as declared and pays dividends out on a quarterly schedule.
• About 500 stocks, cap-weighted, so the largest companies carry the most weight; equal-weight takes on the same index, like RSP, spread it differently.

• SPYM The S&P 500 is cap-weighted, so the biggest US companies drive most of the move. Equal-weight takes on the same index (RSP) spread that bet differently.
• About 500 US large caps and nothing else: no mid caps, no small caps, no international.
• The fee edge over VOO and IVV is one basis point. Same index, so trading costs and platform access matter as much as the sticker fee.

Full SPY profile⁠

Full SPYM profile⁠