Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24
At These Levels, Buying Silver Is Like Getting It At $5 In 2003 - 28th Oct 24
Nvidia Numero Uno Selling Shovels in the AI Gold Rush - 28th Oct 24
The Future of Online Casinos - 28th Oct 24
Panic in the Air As Stock Market Correction Delivers Deep Opps in AI Tech Stocks - 27th Oct 24
Stocks, Bitcoin, Crypto's Counting Down to President Donald Pump! - 27th Oct 24
UK Budget 2024 - What to do Before 30th Oct - Pensions and ISA's - 27th Oct 24
7 Days of Crypto Opportunities Starts NOW - 27th Oct 24
The Power Law in Venture Capital: How Visionary Investors Like Yuri Milner Have Shaped the Future - 27th Oct 24
This Points To Significantly Higher Silver Prices - 27th Oct 24
US House Prices Trend Forecast 2024 to 2026 - 11th Oct 24
US Housing Market Analysis - Immigration Drives House Prices Higher - 30th Sep 24
Stock Market October Correction - 30th Sep 24
The Folly of Tariffs and Trade Wars - 30th Sep 24
Gold: 5 principles to help you stay ahead of price turns - 30th Sep 24
The Everything Rally will Spark multi year Bull Market - 30th Sep 24
US FIXED MORTGAGES LIMITING SUPPLY - 23rd Sep 24
US Housing Market Free Equity - 23rd Sep 24
US Rate Cut FOMO In Stock Market Correction Window - 22nd Sep 24
US State Demographics - 22nd Sep 24
Gold and Silver Shine as the Fed Cuts Rates: What’s Next? - 22nd Sep 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks:Nothing Can Topple This Market - 22nd Sep 24
US Population Growth Rate - 17th Sep 24
Are Stocks Overheating? - 17th Sep 24
Sentiment Speaks: Silver Is At A Major Turning Point - 17th Sep 24
If The Stock Market Turn Quickly, How Bad Can Things Get? - 17th Sep 24
IMMIGRATION DRIVES HOUSE PRICES HIGHER - 12th Sep 24
Global Debt Bubble - 12th Sep 24
Gold’s Outlook CPI Data - 12th Sep 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Build Your Stocks Portfolio With Different ETF Weightings

Portfolio / Exchange Traded Funds Sep 17, 2009 - 08:24 AM GMT

By: Ron_Rowland

Portfolio

Best Financial Markets Analysis ArticleYou probably know that exchange traded funds (ETFs) are usually based on an index. In some cases the indexes are broad, like the S&P 500. Others are narrowly specialized in sectors like biotechnology or software. This means that ETF investors need to understand how indexes work.


So today I want to tell you about index weighting. This may sound like a dry subject, but it’s important. As you’ll see, different weighting strategies can make a big difference to your success.

What Do We Mean By “Weighting?”

Weighting is simply the way stocks are distributed in a portfolio. If, for instance, you have a million dollars and you decide to invest $300,000 in a stock, we would say you have a 30 percent weighting in that stock.

An index is nothing more than a publicly-available list of stocks that are weighted according to some sort of strategy. The S&P 500, for example, consists of 500 large U.S. stocks that are selected by a committee at Standard & Poor’s.

Like most indexes, the S&P 500 is “cap-weighted.” Each stock receives an allocation equal to its proportional market capitalization — the total value of all outstanding shares at the latest price.

We’ll use ExxonMobil (XOM) as an example. As of August 31, 2009, all of the shares of XOM put together were worth about $337 billion. Do this same calculation with the other 499 companies in the S&P 500, and the sum total was almost $9 trillion.

This means that ExxonMobil was roughly 3.8 percent of the total value of the S&P 500 on that day. If you owned an ETF based on the S&P 500, such as the SPDR Trust (SPY), you essentially had 3.8 percent of your money in XOM. The rest was split among the index’s other stocks.

With hundreds of stocks in the index, it’s obvious that a few large companies like XOM dominate the portfolio. The remaining ones get very small allocations — a fraction of a percent in most cases.

This is the drawback to cap-weighted indexing: The bigger companies get an outsize share. That’s great if those companies perform well, but not so great if they run into trouble.

To address this problem — and hopefully attract investors — some ETF sponsors have developed alternative weighting schemes. None are perfect, of course, but they can be very useful at times. Here are five for you to consider:

Alternative #1: Equal Weighting

This approach is strikingly simple: Just divide the money between all the stocks in an index equally. If your index consists of 50 stocks, each one gets 2 percent.

Equal weighting treats all stocks the same.
Equal weighting treats all stocks the same.

Equal weighting was pioneered by Rydex, which offers a series of ETFs using this methodology. Rydex S&P Equal Weight ETF (RSP) owns the same stocks as the S&P 500 but with equal-weighting rather than cap-weighting.

Comparing SPY vs. RSP reveals how big the difference in returns can be …

In the first eight months of 2009, SPY (including dividends) was up 15 percent. RSP gained 29 percent during the same period.

How does this happen?

The smaller-cap stocks get a bigger weighting in RSP than they do in SPY. And those stocks have done generally better this year than most of the mega-cap issues. This isn’t always the case. But equal weighting clearly had a huge positive impact so far this year.

In addition to RSP, here are some other equal-weighted ETFs you might want to consider:

  • SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI)
  • First Trust Nasdaq-100 Equal Weighted Fund (QQEW)
  • SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF (XSD)

Alternative #2 and #3: Dividend and Earnings Weighting

If you love income, then you’ll probably want to tilt your portfolio toward the stocks with a record of growing their dividends. So take a look at the ETFs offered by WisdomTree.

WisdomTree argues that, by design, cap-weighted ETFs are forced to buy high and sell low. Here’s why that’s true:

The higher a stock’s market capitalization (shares outstanding multiplied by the share price), the more shares a cap-weighted ETF buys. If those share prices decline, the market capitalization of the stock declines as well. Consequently, they are replaced with higher-cap stocks when the ETF rebalances its portfolio.

WisdomTree’s solution is a set of indexes that use fundamental factors like dividends and earnings to allocate among stocks. They think this will lead to better long-term results, and they have a lot of research to support their point.

Fundamental factors are more objective than stock prices.
Fundamental factors are more objective than stock prices.

One advantage of this approach is that dividends and earnings are much more objective than stock prices as a way of measuring a company’s success. We’ve all seen stocks launched into orbit by irrational investors chasing surging stock prices, only to come crashing back down.

Dividends aren’t so easily manipulated. And screening for companies with consistent earnings can help weed out the money-losing and speculative ones.

WisdomTree has a whole family of ETFs that follow variations on this theme. Some of the most popular are:

  • WisdomTree Dividend excluding Financials (DTN)
  • WisdomTree India Earnings Fund (EPI)
  • WisdomTree Emerging Markets SmallCap Dividend (DGS)

Alternative #4: Revenue Weighting

Another methodology is offered by a company called RevenueShares. The name gives away their strategy: Stocks in their ETFs are weighted by revenue.

Revenue is even more resistant to manipulation than earnings. In accounting lingo, it’s the “top line” of money coming in. Public companies are required to disclose it in their SEC filings, so the information is readily available.

Revenue is what makes companies grow.
Revenue is what makes companies grow.

RevenueShares says that weighting stocks by their revenue can deliver attractive returns over time. Though of course it doesn’t mean their strategy will work all the time. Here are some of the best-known RevenueShares ETFs:

  • RevenueShares Small Cap (RWJ)
  • RevenueShares Mid Cap (RWK)
  • RevenueShares Large Cap (RWL)

Alternative #5: Combinations of Fundamental Weightings

Alternatives #2 — #4 discussed above are sometimes referred to as fundamental weighting. Rob Arnott, of Research Affiliates, has created fundamentally weighted indexes using a combination of factors such as sales, book value, dividends, and cash flow. And he has teamed up with FTSE to offer the FTSE-RAFI indexes.

Some of the ETFs using this approach include:

  • PowerShares FTSE-RAFI US 1000 (PRF)
  • PowerShares FTSE-RAFI Emerging Markets (PXH)
  • PowerShares FTSE-RAFI US 1500 Small-Mid (PRFZ)

For longtime investors, cap-weighting is what they know. And that may describe you, too. After all, it’s familiar. But staying open to new ideas can pay off in the long run. So take a look at these alternative-weighting strategies … you may find something you really like.

Best wishes,

Ron

P.S. I’m now on Twitter. Please follow me at http://www.twitter.com/ron_rowland for frequent updates, personal insights and observations about the world of ETFs.

If you don’t have a Twitter account, sign up today at http://www.twitter.com/signup and then click on the ‘Follow’ button from http://www.twitter.com/ron_rowland to receive updates on either your cell phone or Twitter page.

This investment news is brought to you by Money and Markets . Money and Markets is a free daily investment newsletter from Martin D. Weiss and Weiss Research analysts offering the latest investing news and financial insights for the stock market, including tips and advice on investing in gold, energy and oil. Dr. Weiss is a leader in the fields of investing, interest rates, financial safety and economic forecasting. To view archives or subscribe, visit http://www.moneyandmarkets.com .

Money and Markets Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in