SPYD vs SYLD

SPYDAState Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 High Dividend ETF

SYLDDCambria Shareholder Yield ETF

In short

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.

SYLD Most dividend funds count one thing: the payout. SYLD counts every way a company hands cash back, dividends, buybacks and debt paydown, in an active, roughly 100-stock US portfolio running since 2013.

Stated mandate

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.

SYLD The fund seeks income and capital appreciation through an actively managed portfolio of U.S.-based publicly listed companies with high shareholder yield, measured through dividends, buybacks and debt paydowns.

Why people hold it

• 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.

• SYLD Dividends are one route back to shareholders. This screen also credits buybacks and debt paydown, so it can own cash generators a pure yield list skips.cambriafunds.com
• Actively managed, not index-tracking: about 100 US names chosen on cash returned, rather than whatever a fixed rulebook happens to catch at rebalance.
• Live since 2013 with billions in assets and quarterly distributions. A funded, road-tested strategy, not a launch-year experiment.

Worth knowing

• 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.

• SYLD At 0.59% it costs more than the typical dividend-screen fund, and index heavyweights like SCHD and VIG charge a fraction of that. Active picking is the bill.
• Thinly traded next to the big dividend ETFs, so spreads and limit orders deserve a look before you hit the button.
• It measures itself against the S&P 500 while holding about 100 value-tilted names, so its path can diverge widely from the broad market in either direction.

Full SPYD profile⁠

Full SYLD profile⁠