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An $860 Million Trade Just Saved One ETF Investor $559,000

An $860 Million Trade Just Saved One ETF Investor $559,000

(Bloomberg) -- Sometimes it only takes a moment to save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

At 11:57 a.m. in New York Tuesday, one investor sold more than $860 million of shares in State Street Corp.’s SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, ticker SPY, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Almost simultaneously, an investor bought a similar amount of Charles Schwab Corp.’s U.S. Large-Cap ETF, ticker SCHX.

The likely reason? Cost. At just 3 basis points, the fee on Schwab’s fund is 6.5 basis points cheaper than State Street’s. While that might not sound like much, on $860 million the shift saves $559,000 a year.

“This shows how fee-sensitive people are,” said Mohit Bajaj, director of exchange-traded funds at WallachBeth Capital. “And SCHX has slightly outperformed SPY this year as well.”

SCHX tracks the Dow Jones U.S. Large-Cap Total Stock Market Index, rather than the S&P 500. As a result, the fund is up 5.4 percent this year, versus SPY’s 5.1 percent, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

--With assistance from Michael Bellusci.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rachel Evans in New York at revans43@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Eric J. Weiner, Andrew Dunn

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