The First Trust Financials AlphaDEX ETF (FXO) was launched on 05/08/2007, and is a smart beta exchange traded fund designed to offer broad exposure to the Financials ETFs category of the market.

What Are Smart Beta ETFs?

The ETF industry has traditionally been dominated by products based on market capitalization weighted indexes that are designed to represent the market or a particular segment of the market.

Market cap weighted indexes offer a low-cost, convenient, and transparent way of replicating market returns, and are a good option for investors who believe in market efficiency.

However, some investors believe in the possibility of beating the market through exceptional stock selection, and choose a different type of fund that tracks non-cap weighted strategies: smart beta.

By attempting to pick stocks that have a better chance of risk-return performance, non-cap weighted indexes are based on certain fundamental characteristics, or a combination of such.

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

Because the fund has amassed over $1.93 billion, this makes it one of the larger ETFs in the Financials ETFs. FXO is managed by First Trust Advisors. This particular fund seeks to match the performance of the StrataQuant Financials Index before fees and expenses.

The StrataQuant Financials Index is a modified equal-dollar weighted index designed by the AMEX to objectively identify and select stocks from the Russell 1000 Index that may generate positive alpha relative to traditional passive style indices through the use of the AlphaDEX screening methodology.

Cost & Other Expenses

Cost is an important factor in selecting the right ETF, and cheaper funds can significantly outperform their more expensive cousins if all other fundamentals are the same.

Operating expenses on an annual basis are 0.62% for this ETF, which makes it on par with most peer products in the space.

It's 12-month trailing dividend yield comes in at 2.73%.

Sector Exposure and Top Holdings

Most ETFs are very transparent products, and disclose their holdings on a daily basis. ETFs also offer diversified exposure, which minimizes single stock risk, though it's still important for investors to research a fund's holdings.

For FXO, it has heaviest allocation in the Financials sector --about 100% of the portfolio.

Taking into account individual holdings, Jefferies Financial Group Inc. (JEF) accounts for about 1.86% of the fund's total assets, followed by The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS) and Tpg Inc. (class A) (TPG).