In the trailing five year period, RSP has out-performed SPY, +8.55% versus -4.70%, so it is clear that significant alpha to the benchmark has been realized by those managers that forayed into equal weighting (RSP debuted in April of 2003) and is quickly becoming a “seasoned veteran” of the ETF landscape. “Old schoolers” will recall when RSP from inception up until just recently was called “Rydex S&P 500 Equal Weight”, which was the case prior to the Guggenheim merger/acquisition with Rydex ETFs.
From a top down standpoint, ETF portfolio managers will notice that since RSP applies a monthly re-balance in its index methodology, the top individual equity weightings in the portfolio are vastly different from say SPY or IVV. The top five holdings of RSP currently are NFLX (0.28%), THC (0.26%), LOW (0.25%), WHR (0.25%), and GILD (0.25%) where as in the market cap weighted S&P 500 Index as tracked by SPY and IVV, the top five looks like the following: AAPL (4.30%), XOM (3.19%), GE (1.75%), CVX (1.63%), IBM (1.60%).
Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight
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