VOXP vs XLC

VOXPBVox Populi ETF

XLCAState Street Communication Services Select Sector SPDR ETF

In short

VOXP US communication services beyond the mega caps: one index sleeve spanning large, mid and small caps, with 25/50 rules capping how far the sector's giants can dominate. A small, lightly traded fund running a very big fund's blueprint.

XLC Launched in 2018, XLC bottles the communication services corner of the S&P 500: search, social, streaming and the phone companies, in one 0.08% wrapper that trades heavily all day.

Stated mandate

VOXP The Fund seeks to track a benchmark measuring the investment return of communication services stocks.

XLC The fund seeks to track, before expenses, the price and yield performance of the Communication Services Select Sector Index.

Why people hold it

• VOXP Costs 0.30% a year, under the 0.35% median for broad communication services funds, and it distributes quarterly.
• Its benchmark is a sector slice of the MSCI US Investable Market Index, which spans large, mid and small cap US stocks, so the basket reaches past the mega caps.msci.com
• The 25/50 rules cap any one issuer at 25% of the index and hold all positions above 5% to 50% combined, a structural check on concentration.msci.com

• XLC Costs 0.08% a year, a fraction of the typical fund in this sector group and tied with the cheapest of them (FCOM at 0.08%, VOX at 0.09%).
• A multi-billion-dollar fund and one of the busiest tickers in its category, so getting in and out is rarely the hard part.
• Clean, rules-based job: it shadows the Communication Services Select Sector Index closely, one of the tightest implementations in its peer group.ssga.com
• Large-cap only: constituents come from the S&P 500, spanning telecom, media, entertainment and interactive media, with S&P capping rules limiting how big any one name gets.ssga.comspglobal.com

Worth knowing

• VOXP Vanguard's VOX tracks the same declared index for 0.09%, so the fee gap is the main thing to weigh between two funds built on one blueprint.
• Small asset base and light trading volume mean wider spreads than the category's giants; limit orders matter more here.
• Launched in 2022, so it has far less track record than the decade-plus incumbents, and long-run tracking data is thin.

• XLC This is the most top-heavy neighborhood in the index. Even with capping at rebalance, a few mega-cap internet names set the tone for the whole fund.spglobal.com
• One sector out of eleven in the S&P 500, so it tracks ad budgets, subscriptions and phone bills rather than the broad market.spglobal.com
• FCOM and VOX sit within a penny of the same fee, so the real choice is index breadth: XLC stops at the S&P 500. Distributions come quarterly.ssga.com

Full VOXP profile⁠

Full XLC profile⁠