Invest with Sector ETFs
Sector ETFs are a powerful tool for investors, offering a straightforward way to incorporate simple or sophisticated sector strategies with precision and transparency. And with $633B in AUM,1 it’s clear that equity sector ETFs are more than just a trend.
Powerful Portfolio Construction Tools
Sectors divide the economy into groups of companies that operate similar businesses or provide related products and services. Creating these segments enables in-depth analysis of market dynamics to see which parts of the economy are flourishing — or lagging — in order to find pockets of potential out performance.
Sector investments provide targeted exposure to these economic segments, giving you a wide variety of options to enhance the core of your equity portfolio and adapt to changing market cycles with agility and precision.
Customize Portfolios with Sector Strategies
Using sector-based investment strategies can help you align and adjust your portfolios based on macroeconomic or thematic trends, like clean energy and declining interest rates, changing stock fundamentals, or shifts in technical indicators, like momentum.
Sector strategies can help you:
- Pursue alpha: capitalize on a wide dispersion of returns by overweighting winners and underweighting losers
- Position for business cycles: align your portfolio with shifts in business cycles by either increasing or reducing allocations to specific sectors based on the current economic phase
- Capture secular or cyclical industry trends: sectors are closely aligned with specific economic variables (oil, inflation, rates), and can help investors capture secular or cyclical industry trends
- Harness diversification benefits: seek targeted exposure to a theme or trend without taking on stock-specific risks
Read more about each of these investment cases in Four Reasons to Implement a Sector Strategy.
Assess Sector and Industry Performance and Flows
Ready to evaluate a sector or industry allocation? Use these resources to guide your decision making.
Sector & Industry Dashboard
Spotting Sector and Industry Trends
How to Construct a Sector Portfolio
When you’re ready to implement a sector strategy, you can consider carving out a portion of your US equity exposure for sectors. Then, choose your sectors based on these types of analysis:
Top-Down
Analyze business cycles to rotate towards sectors that could potentially benefit more from the current economic phase.
Thematic
Survey macroeconomic data (oil, inflation, rates) to position according to changes in certain macroeconomic variables. Identify cyclical or secular industry trends to harness the growth potential within a particular segment of the economy.
Bottom-Up
Use aggregated company-level data to identify sectors with attractive fundamental characteristics, such as cheaper valuations and/or stronger earnings sentiment.
Technical
Evaluate recent performance to overweight/underweight sectors with strong price momentum.
Choose ETFs for Your Sector Allocation
Investing in sector ETFs can be an efficient way to implement sophisticated strategies with precision and transparency.
ETFs can offer:
- Exposure to an entire sector or industry in one trade;
- Cost-effective, liquid market access; and
- Transparency, so you’ll always know the full makeup of your exposure.
Partner with a Leader in Sector Investing
State Street Global Advisors launched the world’s first suite of sector ETFs in 1998, and continues to expand on that heritage to help investors precisely meet their desired sector exposures.
World’s largest sector ETF provider 3
Average trading volume than the next-largest competitor 4
Managing sector ETFs
