Looking for broad exposure to the Consumer Discretionary - Retail segment of the equity market? You should consider the State Street SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT), a passively managed exchange traded fund launched on June 19, 2006.
Passively managed ETFs are becoming increasingly popular with institutional as well as retail investors due to their low cost, transparency, flexibility and tax efficiency. They are excellent vehicles for long term investors.
Sector ETFs also provide investors access to a broad group of companies in particular sectors that offer low risk and diversified exposure. Consumer Discretionary - Retail is one of the 16 broad Zacks sectors within the Zacks Industry classification. It is currently ranked 8, placing it in top 50%.
Index Details
The fund is sponsored by State Street Investment Management. It has amassed assets over $240.88 million, making it one of the average sized ETFs attempting to match the performance of the Consumer Discretionary - Retail segment of the equity market. XRT seeks to match the performance of the S&P Retail Select Industry Index before fees and expenses.
The S&P Retail Select Industry Index represents the retail sub-industry portion of the S&P TMI. The S&P TMI tracks all the U.S. common stocks listed on the NYSE, AMEX, NASDAQ National Market and NASDAQ Small Cap exchanges. The Retail Index is a modified equal weight index.
Costs
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 cheaper products in the space.
It has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 1.3%.
Sector Exposure and Top Holdings
ETFs offer a diversified exposure and thus minimize single stock risk but it is still important to delve into a fund's holdings before investing. Most ETFs are very transparent products and many disclose their holdings on a daily basis.
This ETF has heaviest allocation in the Consumer Discretionary sector -- about 78.4% of the portfolio, followed by Consumer Staples.
Looking at individual holdings, Etsy Inc (ETSY) accounts for about 1.77% of total assets, followed by Odp Corp/the (ODP) and National Vision Holdings Inc (EYE).
The top 10 holdings account for about 16.11% of total assets under management.
Performance and Risk
The ETF has gained about 2.64% and it's up approximately 6.45% so far this year and in the past one year (as of 11/06/2025), respectively. XRT has traded between $62.11 and $88.49 during this last 52-week period.
The ETF has a beta of 1.24 and standard deviation of 23.73% for the trailing three-year period, making it a medium risk choice in the space. With about 80 holdings, it effectively diversifies company-specific risk.
Alternatives
State Street SPDR S&P Retail ETF sports a Zacks ETF Rank of 4 (Sell), which is based on expected asset class return, expense ratio, and momentum, among other factors. XRT, then, is not a great choice for investors seeking exposure to the Consumer Discretionary ETFs segment of the market. However, there are better ETFs in the space to consider.
Amplify Online Retail ETF (IBUY) tracks EQM Online Retail Index and the VanEck Retail ETF (RTH) tracks MVIS US Listed Retail 25 Index. Amplify Online Retail ETF has $153.02 million in assets, VanEck Retail ETF has $255.46 million. IBUY has an expense ratio of 0.65%, and RTH charges 0.35%.
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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State Street SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT): ETF Research ReportsThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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