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Is Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Staples ETF (RHS) a Strong ETF Right Now?

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Making its debut on 11/01/2006, smart beta exchange traded fund Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Staples ETF provides investors broad exposure to the Consumer Staples ETFs category of the market.

What Are Smart Beta ETFs?

The ETF industry has long been dominated by products based on market cap weighted indexes, a strategy created to reflect the market or a particular market segment.

Market cap weighted indexes offer a low-cost, convenient, and transparent way of replicating market returns, and are a good option for investors who believe in market efficiency.

If you're the kind of investor who would rather try and beat the market through good stock selection, then smart beta funds are your best choice; this fund class is known for tracking non-cap weighted strategies.

Non-cap weighted indexes try to choose stocks that have a better chance of risk-return performance, which is based on specific fundamental characteristics, or a mix of other such characteristics.

Even though this space provides many choices to investors--think one of the simplest methodologies like equal-weighting and more complicated ones like fundamental and volatility/momentum based weighting--not all have been able to deliver first-rate results.

Fund Sponsor & Index

The fund is managed by Invesco, and has been able to amass over $677.01 million, which makes it one of the average sized ETFs in the Consumer Staples ETFs. This particular fund seeks to match the performance of the S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Staples Index before fees and expenses.

The S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Staples Index equally weights stocks in the consumer staples sector of the S&P 500 Index.

Cost & Other Expenses

When considering an ETF's total return, expense ratios are an important factor. And, cheaper funds can significantly outperform their more expensive cousins in the long term if all other factors remain equal.

Annual operating expenses for this ETF are 0.40%, making it on par with most peer products in the space.

The fund has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 2.37%.

Sector Exposure and Top Holdings

While ETFs offer diversified exposure, which minimizes single stock risk, a deep look into a fund's holdings is a valuable exercise. And, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.

For RHS, it has heaviest allocation in the Consumer Staples sector --about 100% of the portfolio.

When you look at individual holdings, Lamb Weston Holdings Inc (LW - Free Report) accounts for about 3.48% of the fund's total assets, followed by Costco Wholesale Corp (COST - Free Report) and General Mills Inc (GIS - Free Report) .

RHS's top 10 holdings account for about 32.28% of its total assets under management.

Performance and Risk

So far this year, RHS has gained about 1.03%, and is up about 7.72% in the last one year (as of 11/18/2022). During this past 52-week period, the fund has traded between $153.68 and $180.71.

The fund has a beta of 0.61 and standard deviation of 19.60% for the trailing three-year period, which makes RHS a medium risk choice in this particular space. With about 34 holdings, it has more concentrated exposure than peers.

Alternatives

Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Staples ETF is a reasonable option for investors seeking to outperform the Consumer Staples ETFs segment of the market. However, there are other ETFs in the space which investors could consider.

Vanguard Consumer Staples ETF (VDC - Free Report) tracks MSCI US Investable Market Consumer Staples 25/50 Index and the Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLP - Free Report) tracks Consumer Staples Select Sector Index. Vanguard Consumer Staples ETF has $6.61 billion in assets, Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR ETF has $16.56 billion. VDC has an expense ratio of 0.10% and XLP charges 0.10%.

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