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Is SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB) a Strong ETF Right Now?

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The SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB - Free Report) made its debut on 01/31/2006, and is a smart beta exchange traded fund that provides broad exposure to the Industrials 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.

Investors who believe in market efficiency should consider market cap indexes, as they replicate market returns in a low-cost, convenient, and transparent way.

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.

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 $2.01 billion, which makes it one of the larger ETFs in the Industrials ETFs. This particular fund, before fees and expenses, seeks to match the performance of the S&P Homebuilders Select Industry Index.

The S&P Homebuilders Select Industry Index represents the homebuilding sub-industry portion of the S&P Total Markets Index. The S&P TMI tracks all the US common stocks listed on the NYSE, AMEX, NASDAQ National Market and NASDAQ Small Cap exchanges. The Homebuilders 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 this ETF are 0.35%, making it one of the least expensive products in the space.

The fund has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 0.65%.

Sector Exposure and Top Holdings

It is important to delve into an ETF's holdings before investing despite the many upsides to these kinds of funds like diversified exposure, which minimizes single stock risk. And, 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 53.10% of the portfolio. Industrials and Energy round out the top three.

When you look at individual holdings, Williams Sonoma Inc (WSM - Free Report) accounts for about 5.06% of the fund's total assets, followed by Trane Technologies Plc (TT - Free Report) and Carlisle Cos Inc (CSL - Free Report) .

XHB's top 10 holdings account for about 42.02% of its total assets under management.

Performance and Risk

The ETF return is roughly 12.34% so far this year and is up about 29.56% in the last one year (as of 08/13/2024). In the past 52-week period, it has traded between $69.36 and $118.19.

The fund has a beta of 1.43 and standard deviation of 27.83% for the trailing three-year period, which makes XHB a high risk choice in this particular space. With about 37 holdings, it has more concentrated exposure than peers.

Alternatives

SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF is a reasonable option for investors seeking to outperform the Industrials ETFs segment of the market. However, there are other ETFs in the space which investors could consider.

Invesco Building & Construction ETF (PKB - Free Report) tracks Dynamic Building & Construction Intellidex Index. The fund has $291.90 million in assets. PKB has an expense ratio of 0.62%.

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