SCHD Dethrones VIG as Biggest Dividend ETF in Standout Year Sumit Roy Fri, November 13, 2026 at 9:30 PM EST SCHD +0.42% VOO -1.00% VIG +0.01% ^DJI +0.10% DIVB +0.52% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
The Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF (SCHD) is having a standout year. The fund has returned 34.7% so far in 2026, including dividends, far ahead of the 11.4% total return for the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO).
That surge, along with $27.5 billion in inflows, has catapulted SCHD past the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG) to become the largest dividend ETF in the US. VIG, with $118 billion in assets, has returned 15.9% this year.
SCHD and VIG are both dividend funds, but they're built very differently.
VIG tracks the S&P U.S. Dividend Growers Index, which requires companies to have raised their dividends for at least 10 consecutive years. It excludes the highest-yielding 25% of eligible stocks to avoid companies with potentially unsustainable payouts, and weights the rest by market value.
SCHD tracks the Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100 Index, which leans toward higher yields. Companies need at least 10 consecutive years of dividend payments, not necessarily increases. They're then ranked on measures like free cash flow relative to debt, return on equity, dividend yield and five-year dividend growth, and the top 100 make the cut. Individual holdings are capped at 4% and sectors at 25%.
SCHD's outperformance this year comes down largely to its sector mix. Consumer staples make up about 20% of the fund, health care just under a fifth and energy more than 15%. Tech, the market's biggest sector, accounts for only about 12%.
That positioning has paid off. Energy has been the best-performing sector this year by a wide margin, fueled by the Iran war. Health care and consumer staples have broken out of long trading ranges, as investors gravitate toward areas seen as insulated from AI disruption.
The fund's quality and dividend screens have also picked some big winners. Ironically, the biggest contributor to SCHD's return this year is a chip company: Texas Instruments, which makes analog chips, a less AI-centric corner of the semiconductor market. TI is the fund's largest holding. The stock is up 79% this year and has added 3.8 percentage points to the fund's return.
Health care and energy names round out the top contributors. UnitedHealth, which joined the fund in March, has added 2.3 percentage points. ConocoPhillips added 2.1 points and is up 55%, Chevron added 1.9 points and is up 48%, and Merck added 1.8 points and is up 43%.
SCHD is the second-best-performing dividend ETF this year, behind only the iShares Core Dividend ETF (DIVB), up 37.2%. It has also gathered by far the most money: its $27.5 billion of inflows dwarfs the $8.9 billion for the next-closest dividend fund, the Capital Group Dividend Value ETF (CGDV). VIG, the former No. 1, has taken in just $1.2 billion.
As always, performance among dividend funds varies widely, depending on each fund's strategy, sector tilts and holdings. This year, SCHD's approach is working. Over longer periods, the story is less impressive.
Over the past five years, SCHD has returned 63% on a total return basis, compared with 65% for VIG and 73% for VOO. Over 10 years, it's a similar picture, with SCHD up 259%, VIG up 262% and VOO up 309%.
In other words, VOO has consistently come out ahead. VIG had held the edge over SCHD for most of that time, but this year's rally has brought SCHD roughly even with its rival over both five and 10 years.
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