SPY vs USPX

SPYAState Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF

USPXAFranklin U.S. Equity Index 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.

USPX The odd one out in the S&P 500 aisle. Franklin's fund tracks a Morningstar large-cap benchmark instead, for three basis points. Same big-US-stocks job, different scorecard, and a fee that undercuts most of the peer group.

Stated mandate

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

USPX The fund seeks to provide U.S. equity exposure through an index-based strategy.

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.

• USPX 0.03% a year, a fraction of the roughly 0.15% typical in its peer group and level with the fee on VOO and IVV.
• Sticks close to its Morningstar US Target Market Exposure Index, one of the tighter index-following records among the S&P 500 wrappers it sits beside.
• Rules-based cap-weighted US equity, roughly 190 names, no factor tilts or manager picks. Pays quarterly.
• Running since 2016 and now a multi-billion-dollar fund, with Franklin Templeton behind it.

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.

• USPX Different index, different constituent rules. Holdings and returns can drift from the S&P 500 trackers most people compare it to.
• Moderately traded rather than a volume monster like SPY, which can mean wider bid-ask spreads than the biggest names in the category.
• Fewer names than the 500-stock benchmarks next door, and cap weighting keeps the largest US companies in the driver's seat.

Full SPY profile⁠

Full USPX profile⁠