Designed to provide broad exposure to the Consumer Discretionary - Retail segment of the equity market, the State Street SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT Quick QuoteXRT - Free Report) is a passively managed exchange traded fund launched on June 19, 2006.

Retail and institutional investors increasingly turn to passively managed ETFs because they offer low costs, transparency, flexibility, and tax efficiency; these kind of funds are also excellent vehicles for long term investors.

Investor-friendly, sector ETFs provide many options to gain low risk and diversified exposure to a broad group of companies in particular sectors. Consumer Discretionary - Retail is one of the 16 broad Zacks sectors within the Zacks Industry classification. It is currently ranked 12, placing it in bottom 25%.

Index Details

The fund is sponsored by State Street Investment Management. It has amassed assets over $407.72 million, making it one of the larger ETFs attempting to match the performance of the Consumer Discretionary - Retail segment of the equity market. XRT seeks to match the performance of the S&P Retail Select Industry Index before fees and expenses.

The S&P Retail Select Industry Index represents the retail sub-industry portion of the S&P TMI. 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 Retail Index is a modified equal weight index.

Costs

Expense ratios are an important factor in the return of an ETF and in the long term, cheaper funds can significantly outperform their more expensive counterparts, other things remaining the same.

Annual operating expenses for this ETF are 0.35%, making it one of the cheaper products in the space.

It has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 0.79%.

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 79.6% of the portfolio, followed by Consumer Staples.

Looking at individual holdings, Marinemax Inc (HZO) accounts for about 2.13% of total assets, followed by Abercrombie + Fitch Co Cl A (ANF) and Realreal Inc/the (REAL).

The top 10 holdings account for about 17.13% of total assets under management.

Performance and Risk

The ETF has added roughly 0.74% so far this year and is down about 0.17% in the last one year (as of 09/15/2026). In that past 52-week period, it has traded between $77.28 and $92.35.

The ETF has a beta of 1.15 and standard deviation of 22.2% for the trailing three-year period, making it a medium risk choice in the space. With about 77 holdings, it effectively diversifies company-specific risk.

Alternatives

State Street SPDR S&P Retail ETF sports a Zacks ETF Rank of 4 (Sell), which is based on expected asset class return, expense ratio, and momentum, among other factors. XRT, then, is not a great choice for investors seeking exposure to the Consumer Discretionary ETFs segment of the market. Instead, there are better ETFs in the space to consider.

Amplify Online Retail ETF (IBUY) tracks EQM Online Retail Index and the VanEck Retail ETF (RTH) tracks MVIS US Listed Retail 25 Index. Amplify Online Retail ETF has $121.54 million in assets, VanEck Retail ETF has $244.34 million. IBUY has an expense ratio of 0.65%, and RTH 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.