The FlexShares Morningstar U.S. Market Factor Tilt ETF (TILT) made its debut on 09/16/2011, and is a smart beta exchange traded fund that provides broad exposure to the Style Box - All Cap Blend category of the market.
What Are Smart Beta ETFs?
The ETF industry has long been dominated by products based on market cap weighted indexes, a strategy created to reflect the market or a particular market segment.
Because market cap weighted indexes provide a low-cost, convenient, and transparent way of replicating market returns, they work well for investors who believe in market efficiency.
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.
These indexes attempt to select stocks that have better chances of risk-return performance, based on certain fundamental characteristics or a combination of 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
Managed by Flexshares, TILT has amassed assets over $1.78 billion, making it one of the larger ETFs in the Style Box - All Cap Blend. Before fees and expenses, TILT seeks to match the performance of the Morningstar U.S. Market Factor Tilt Index.
The Morningstar U.S. Market Factor Tilt Index measures the performance of U.S. equity markets with increased exposure toward small-capitalization and value stocks.
Cost & Other Expenses
When considering an ETF's total return, expense ratios are an important factor. And, cheaper funds can significantly outperform their more expensive cousins in the long term if all other factors remain equal.
Annual operating expenses for this ETF are 0.25%, making it on par with most peer products in the space.
It has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 1.15%.
Sector Exposure and Top Holdings
Even though ETFs offer diversified exposure that minimizes single stock risk, investors should also look at the actual holdings inside the fund. Luckily, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.
Representing 27.1% of the portfolio, the fund has heaviest allocation to the Information Technology sector; Financials and Consumer Discretionary round out the top three.
When you look at individual holdings, Nvidia Corp Common Stock Usd 0.001 (NVDA) accounts for about 5.06% of the fund's total assets, followed by Microsoft Corp Common Stock Usd 0.00000625 (MSFT) and Apple Inc Common Stock Usd 0.00001 (AAPL).
Its top 10 holdings account for approximately 26.5% of TILT's total assets under management.
Performance and Risk
The ETF has added roughly 11.69% so far this year and was up about 8.93% in the last one year (as of 11/24/2025). In the past 52-week period, it has traded between $181.13 and $248.44
TILT has a beta of 1.05 and standard deviation of 15.85% for the trailing three-year period, which makes the fund a medium risk choice in the space. With about 2004 holdings, it effectively diversifies company-specific risk .
Alternatives
FlexShares Morningstar U.S. Market Factor Tilt ETF is a reasonable option for investors seeking to outperform the Style Box - All Cap Blend segment of the market. However, there are other ETFs in the space which investors could consider.
iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF (ITOT) tracks S&P Total Market Index and the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) tracks CRSP US Total Market Index. iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF has $77.3 billion in assets, Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF has $544.16 billion. ITOT has an expense ratio of 0.03% and VTI changes 0.03%.
Investors looking for cheaper and lower-risk options should consider traditional market cap weighted ETFs that aim to match the returns of the Style Box - All Cap Blend
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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FlexShares Morningstar U.S. Market Factor Tilt ETF (TILT): ETF Research ReportsThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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