Like their names imply, SPXV excludes health care exposure and SPXT excludes tech companies. Potential investors, though, should be aware that since the funds purposely exclude exposure to some of the largest S&P 500 market sectors, the ETFs portfolios allocations will overweight other large market segments in their place.
SPXV includes a larger 24.9% tilt toward tech, 15.0% financials, 14.7% consumer discretionary, 11.6% consumer staples and 11.4% industrials. SPXT tracks 19.3% health care, 16.8% financials, 16.5% consumer discretionary and 13.0% consumer staples.
Something like SPXT may be a way for investors to still maintain broad market exposure but reduce exposure to a weakening outlook in the tech segment as investors rotate out of the growth style and a stronger U.S. dollar weighs on multi-national company’s overseas revenue streams.
The ex-sector ETFs may also act as a type of sector rotation strategy as health care and technology stocks were previously outperforming areas of the market and have now been replaced by the currently outperforming financials and energy segments.
In previous periods, investors would have turned to the S&P 500 Ex-Energy ETF (NYSEArca: SPXE), which provides exposure to S&P 500 companies with the exception of those included in the Energy Sector, and the S&P 500 Ex-Financial ETF (NYSEArca: SPXN), which tracks the same S&P 500 group sans financial stocks.
Potential investors, though, should be aware that these ETFs are still rather small, so utilize limit orders to take better control over trades.