Designed to provide broad exposure to the Mid Cap Blend segment of the US equity market, the State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 400 Mid Cap ETF (SPMD) is a passively managed exchange traded fund launched on November 8, 2005.
The fund is sponsored by State Street Investment Management. It has amassed assets over $17.53 billion, making it one of the larger ETFs attempting to match the Mid Cap Blend segment of the US equity market.
Why Mid Cap Blend
With market capitalization between $2 billion and $10 billion, mid cap companies usually contain higher growth prospects than large cap companies, and are considered less risky than their small cap counterparts. Thus they have a nice balance of growth potential and stability.
Blend ETFs usually hold a mix of growth and value stocks as well as stocks that exhibit both value and growth characteristics.
Costs
Cost is an important factor in selecting the right ETF, and cheaper funds can significantly outperform their more expensive counterparts if all other fundamentals are the same.
Annual operating expenses for this ETF are 0.03%, making it the least expensive products in the space.
It has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 1.24%.
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 to the Industrials sector -- about 26.2% of the portfolio. Information Technology and Financials round out the top three.
Looking at individual holdings, Technipfmc Plc (FTI) accounts for about 0.88% of total assets, followed by Flex Ltd (FLEX) and Curtiss Wright Corp (CW).
The top 10 holdings account for about 7.32% of total assets under management.
Performance and Risk
SPMD seeks to match the performance of the S&P 1000 Index before fees and expenses. The S&P MidCap 400 Index combines the S&P MidCap 400 and the S&P SmallCap 600 to form an investable benchmark for the mid to small cap segment of the U.S. equity market.
The ETF has added about 13.17% so far this year and was up about 25.56% in the last one year (as of 06/02/2026). In the past 52-week period, it has traded between $52.86 and $65.46.
The ETF has a beta of 1.02 and standard deviation of 17.73% for the trailing three-year period. With about 403 holdings, it effectively diversifies company-specific risk.
Alternatives
State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 400 Mid Cap ETF holds a Zacks ETF Rank of 1 (Strong Buy), which is based on expected asset class return, expense ratio, and momentum, among other factors. Because of this, SPMD is an excellent option for investors seeking exposure to the Style Box - Mid Cap Blend segment of the market. There are other additional ETFs in the space that investors could consider as well.
The Vanguard Mid-Cap Index Fund ETF Shares (VO) and the iShares Core S&P Mid-Cap ETF (IJH) track a similar index. While Vanguard Mid-Cap Index Fund ETF Shares has $102.37 billion in assets, iShares Core S&P Mid-Cap ETF has $119.32 billion. VO has an expense ratio of 0.03% and IJH charges 0.05%.
Bottom-Line
Retail and institutional investors increasingly turn to passively managed ETFs because they offer low costs, transparency, flexibility, and tax efficiency; these kind of funds are also excellent vehicles for long term investors.
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 Portfolio S&P 400 Mid Cap ETF (SPMD): ETF Research Reports
This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).