SVAL vs VTV

SVALBiShares US Small Cap Value Factor ETF

VTVAVanguard Morningstar Value ETF

In short

SVAL Most value ETFs buy big, cheap blue chips. SVAL goes small: a focused cut of the Russell 2000, about 300 stocks picked for the most prominent value traits. The deep end of the value pool.

VTV Value investing for three cents on every hundred dollars a year. Since 2004, VTV has run a passive, fully invested portfolio of roughly 300 large US companies that screen cheap, at a fee near the industry floor.

Stated mandate

SVAL The fund tracks an index of U.S. small-capitalization stocks selected for prominent value characteristics.

VTV The fund seeks to track a large-capitalization U.S. value-stock benchmark through passive indexing and substantial replication of that index.

Why people hold it

• SVAL Truth in labeling: it tracks the Russell 2000 Focused Value Select Index, real small caps screened for value, not mid caps wearing a small-cap name tag.sec.gov
• Focus by design: roughly 300 names out of the Russell 2000's roughly 2,000, so the value screen actually bites instead of getting diluted.lseg.com
• Plain iShares plumbing: a standard 1940 Act index fund at 0.20% a year that pays shareholders quarterly.

• VTV 0.03% a year, about a sixth of the 0.18% median for US value funds. Cost is the part of the outcome the fund actually controls.
• Same recipe, very different sticker: PRXV tracks the same declared value index and charges 0.36%, twelve times VTV's fee.
• Passively managed, full replication, fully invested. No manager hunches, no cash sitting idle, and the fund has tracked its benchmark closely.vanguard.com
• One of the largest and most actively traded funds in the US value aisle, the kind of scale that keeps bid-ask spreads thin for ordinary orders.

Worth knowing

• SVAL At 0.20% it costs more than broad Russell 2000 value trackers like VTWV (0.06%). The extra screening is what you are paying for.
• Thinly traded next to the household names in value land, so spreads can be wider. Limit orders matter more here.
• Small-cap value is the jumpy end of equities, and a focused portfolio can wander a long way from the broad market in either direction.

• VTV Large caps only, about 300 of them. Cheap mid- and small-cap stocks live in separate funds (VOE, VTWV), so this is one slice of value, not the whole market.
• It is a value screen by design, so the priciest fast growers are largely filtered out. In growth-led stretches it can move very differently from a total-market fund.
• Income arrives quarterly, in four instalments rather than a monthly drip.

Full SVAL profile⁠

Full VTV profile⁠