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Should You Invest in the iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF (ITB)?

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Designed to provide broad exposure to the Industrials - Engineering and Construction segment of the equity market, the iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF (ITB - Free Report) is a passively managed exchange traded fund launched on 05/01/2006.

While an excellent vehicle for long term investors, passively managed ETFs are a popular choice among institutional and retail investors due to their low costs, transparency, flexibility, and tax efficiency.

Sector ETFs are also funds of convenience, offering many ways to gain low risk and diversified exposure to a broad group of companies in particular sectors. Industrials - Engineering and Construction is one of the 16 broad Zacks sectors within the Zacks Industry classification. It is currently ranked 13, placing it in bottom 19%.

Index Details

The fund is sponsored by Blackrock. It has amassed assets over $1.52 billion, making it one of the larger ETFs attempting to match the performance of the Industrials - Engineering and Construction segment of the equity market. ITB seeks to match the performance of the Dow Jones U.S. Select Home Construction Index before fees and expenses.

The Dow Jones U.S. Select Home Builders Index is a subset of the Dow Jones U.S. Household Goods Index. It is a free-float adjusted market capitalization-weighted index. It measures the performance of the home construction sector of the U.S. equity market.

Costs

Investors should also pay attention to an ETF's expense ratio. Lower cost products will produce better results than those with a higher cost, assuming all other metrics remain the same.

Annual operating expenses for this ETF are 0.41%, making it one of the cheaper products in the space.

It has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 0.64%.

Sector Exposure and Top Holdings

Even though ETFs offer diversified exposure which minimizes single stock risk, it is still important to look into a fund's holdings before investing. Luckily, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.

This ETF has heaviest allocation in the Consumer Discretionary sector--about 76.70% of the portfolio. Industrials and Materials round out the top three.

Looking at individual holdings, D R Horton Inc (DHI - Free Report) accounts for about 13.90% of total assets, followed by Lennar A Corp (LEN - Free Report) and Nvr Inc (NVR - Free Report) .

The top 10 holdings account for about 63.44% of total assets under management.

Performance and Risk

So far this year, ITB has lost about -26.44%, and is down about -17.34% in the last one year (as of 04/26/2022). During this past 52-week period, the fund has traded between $56.84 and $83.04.

The ETF has a beta of 1.45 and standard deviation of 37.93% for the trailing three-year period, making it a high risk choice in the space. With about 50 holdings, it has more concentrated exposure than peers.

Alternatives

IShares U.S. Home Construction ETF holds a Zacks ETF Rank of 2 (Buy), which is based on expected asset class return, expense ratio, and momentum, among other factors. Because of this, ITB is an excellent option for investors seeking exposure to the Industrials ETFs segment of the market. There are other additional ETFs in the space that investors could consider as well.

Invesco Dynamic Building & Construction ETF (PKB - Free Report) tracks Dynamic Building & Construction Intellidex Index and the SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB - Free Report) tracks S&P Homebuilders Select Industry Index. Invesco Dynamic Building & Construction ETF has $156.46 million in assets, SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF has $1.30 billion. PKB has an expense ratio of 0.60% and XHB charges 0.35%.

Bottom Line

To learn more about this product and other ETFs, screen for products that match your investment objectives and read articles on latest developments in the ETF investing universe, please visit Zacks ETF Center.

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