WisdomTree, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) and exchange-traded product (“ETP”) sponsor and asset manager, today announced
Six WisdomTree domestic dividend exchange traded funds (ETFs) have received a 5-Star Overall Morningstar Rating.
The funds are: the WisdomTree Total Dividend Fund (DTD); the WisdomTree Dividend ex-Financials Fund (DTN); the WisdomTree LargeCap Dividend Fund (DLN); the WisdomTree High Dividend Fund (DHS); the WisdomTree MidCap Dividend Fund (DON); and the WisdomTree SmallCap Dividend Fund (DES).
WisdomTree launched a family of six US dividend funds in June 2006, ten years ago. WisdomTree’s dividend-weighted approach has proven itself over the last decade outperforming most comparable cap-weighted benchmarks and active managers in their respective Morningstar categories. This period, which included the Financial Crisis of 2008-2009, demonstrates these strategies held up under extreme market conditions.
“The real time performance records and five-star ratings from Morningstar serve to validate WisdomTree’s powerful observation ten years ago that weighting equity markets by dividends, packaged in the ETF structure could revolutionise the way people invest,” says WisdomTree’s Chief Investment Strategist, Luciano Siracusano.“Passive investing has undoubtedly served investors well over the past 30 years. Numerous studies confirm that, over time, the vast majority of actively managed mutual funds have failed to outperform comparable cap-weighted indexes, after accounting for fees, expenses and transaction costs.
“The question we posed more than a decade ago, and that many investors are asking today: ‘Can alternatively weighted indexes serve passive investors better than index funds based on traditional benchmarks?’ The real-time track records on many of our original indexes suggest our fundamentally weighted strategies do in fact achieve better returns, often with less volatility, relative to comparable indexes that set weights based on a company’s market value.”
Each of these six Funds has beaten at least 92 per cent of its respective Morningstar category over the five-year period that ended 5/31/2016. The WisdomTree MidCap Dividend Fund (DON) and WisdomTree High Dividend Fund (DHS) have astoundingly beaten 100 per cent and 99 per cent of the mid-cap and large-value categories respectively over this period.
