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Is SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Equipment & Services ETF (XES) a Strong ETF Right Now?

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Launched on 06/19/2006, the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Equipment & Services ETF (XES - Free Report) is a smart beta exchange traded fund offering broad exposure to the Energy ETFs category of the market.

What Are Smart Beta ETFs?

For a long time now, the ETF industry has been flooded with products based on market capitalization weighted indexes, which are designed to represent the broader market or a particular market segment.

Because market cap weighted indexes provide a low-cost, convenient, and transparent way of replicating market returns, they work well for investors who believe in market efficiency.

However, some investors believe in the possibility of beating the market through exceptional stock selection, and choose a different type of fund that tracks non-cap weighted strategies: smart beta.

These indexes attempt to select stocks that have better chances of risk-return performance, based on certain fundamental characteristics or a combination of such characteristics.

While this space offers a number of choices to investors, including simplest equal-weighting, fundamental weighting and volatility/momentum based weighting methodologies, not all these strategies have been able to deliver superior results.

Fund Sponsor & Index

The fund is managed by State Street Global Advisors, and has been able to amass over $265.83 million, which makes it one of the average sized ETFs in the Energy ETFs. This particular fund, before fees and expenses, seeks to match the performance of the S&P Oil & Gas Equipment & Services Select Industry Index.

The S&P Oil & Gas Equipment & Services Select Industry Index represents the oil and gas equipment and services sub-industry portion of the S&P Total Markets Index. The S&P TMI tracks all the U.S. common stocks listed on the NYSE, AMEX,NASDAQ National Market and NASDAQ Small Cap exchanges. The Oil & Gas Equipment Index is a modified equal weight index.

Cost & Other Expenses

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 XES are 0.35%, which makes it one of the least expensive products in the space.

The fund has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 0.34%.

Sector Exposure and Top Holdings

Even though ETFs offer diversified exposure that minimizes single stock risk, investors should also look at the actual holdings inside the fund. Luckily, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.

This ETF has heaviest allocation in the Energy sector - about 100% of the portfolio.

Looking at individual holdings, Technipfmc Plc (FTI - Free Report) accounts for about 5.71% of total assets, followed by U.s. Silica Holdings Inc. (SLCA - Free Report) and Championx Corporation (CHX - Free Report) .

XES's top 10 holdings account for about 48.05% of its total assets under management.

Performance and Risk

So far this year, XES has added about 37.44%, and it's up approximately 18.60% in the last one year (as of 10/26/2022). During this past 52-week period, the fund has traded between $46.75 and $82.43.

XES has a beta of 1.98 and standard deviation of 61.83% for the trailing three-year period, which makes the fund a high risk choice in the space. With about 32 holdings, it has more concentrated exposure than peers.

Alternatives

SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Equipment & Services ETF is an excellent option for investors seeking to outperform the Energy ETFs segment of the market. There are other ETFs in the space which investors could consider as well.

IShares U.S. Oil Equipment & Services ETF (IEZ - Free Report) tracks Dow Jones U.S. Select Oil Equipment & Services Index and the VanEck Oil Services ETF (OIH - Free Report) tracks MVIS U.S. Listed Oil Services 25 Index. IShares U.S. Oil Equipment & Services ETF has $191 million in assets, VanEck Oil Services ETF has $2.73 billion. IEZ has an expense ratio of 0.39% and OIH charges 0.35%.

Investors looking for cheaper and lower-risk options should consider traditional market cap weighted ETFs that aim to match the returns of the Energy ETFs.

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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