Making its debut on 05/08/2007, smart beta exchange traded fund First Trust Energy AlphaDEX ETF (FXN) provides investors broad exposure to the Energy ETFs category of the market.

What Are Smart Beta ETFs?

For a long time now, the ETF industry has been flooded with products based on market capitalization weighted indexes, which are designed to represent the broader market or a particular market segment.

Market cap weighted indexes work great for investors who believe in market efficiency. They provide a low-cost, convenient and transparent way of replicating market returns.

There are some investors, though, who think it's possible to beat the market with great stock selection; this group likely invests in another class of funds known as smart beta, which track non-cap weighted strategies.

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

The fund is managed by First Trust Advisors, and has been able to amass over $298.58 million, which makes it one of the average sized ETFs in the Energy ETFs. Before fees and expenses, FXN seeks to match the performance of the StrataQuant Energy Index.

The StrataQuant Energy 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

Expense ratios are an important factor in the return of an ETF and in the long-term, cheaper funds can significantly outperform their more expensive cousins, other things remaining the same.

Operating expenses on an annual basis are 0.61% for this ETF, which makes it on par with most peer products in the space.

The fund has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 2.77%.

Sector Exposure and Top Holdings

While ETFs offer diversified exposure, which minimizes single stock risk, a deep look into a fund's holdings is a valuable exercise. And, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.

Representing 97% of the portfolio, the fund has heaviest allocation to the Energy sector.

Taking into account individual holdings, Devon Energy Corporation (DVN) accounts for about 4.66% of the fund's total assets, followed by Ovintiv Inc. (OVV) and Nov Inc. (NOV).