WisdomTree U.S. Small Cap Quality Gr’s management team is rated Average, but a solid investment process still helps this strategy retain its Morningstar Medalist Rating of Gold. The portfolio maintains a sizable cost advantage over competitors, priced within the least expensive fee quintile among peers.  

 The strategy's investment process inspires confidence and earns a High Process Pillar rating. Independent of the rating, analysis of the strategy's portfolio shows it has maintained a significant underweight position in momentum exposure and an overweight in quality exposure compared with category peers. Momentum is the premise that stocks that have recently outperformed will continue to do so. With low momentum exposure, the portfolio is holding stocks that managers believe to be undervalued. And a high quality exposure is rooted in holding stocks that are consistently profitable, growing, and have solid balance sheets. The strategy’s management team earns an Average People Pillar rating. The strategy's parent organization earns the firm a Below Average Parent Pillar rating. People Pillar and Parent Pillar ratings for this strategy are indirectly assigned by a Morningstar analyst rather than algorithmically derived. Please see the notes following each pillar section for more details. The details of assigning methods can be found in each pillar section.

Analyst Rating

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Morningstar's evaluation of this security's process aims to determine the likelihood that it will outperform its Morningstar Category benchmark on a risk-adjusted basis over the long term. WisdomTree U.S. SmallCap Qual Gr Fd earns a High Process Pillar rating. 

The predominant contributor to the rating is that this fund tracks an index. Historical data, such as Morningstar's Active/Passive Barometer, finds that passively managed funds have generally outperformed their active counterparts, especially over longer time horizons. The parent firm's excellent risk-adjusted performance, as shown by its average 10-year Morningstar Rating of 3.3 stars, also contributes to the process. The parent firm's five-year risk-adjusted success ratio of 54% reinforces the process. The measure indicates the percentage of a firm's funds that survived and surpassed their respective category's median Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return for the period. Their noteworthy success ratio suggests that this firm does well for investors and that this fund may benefit from that.

 This strategy leans toward smaller, more undervalued companies compared with its average peer in the Small Growth Morningstar Category. Looking at additional factor exposure, this strategy has had relatively low exposure to momentum stocks compared with Morningstar Category peers continually in the last few years. Momentum investors tend to expect stocks that have done well recently to continue to do so in the short term. Momentum approaches can entail higher turnover and trading costs since the top stocks can often change. In the latest month, the strategy was also less exposed to the Momentum factor compared with Morningstar Category peers. This strategy also has had a position favoring high-quality stocks in recent years, which could contribute to higher downside risk protection. High exposure to the quality factor means holding companies that are consistently profitable, growing, and have solid balance sheets. Compared with category peers, the strategy also had more exposure to the Quality factor in the most recent month. In addition, this strategy's holdings have included more companies with high dividend or buyback yields than peers over these years. Higher-yield stocks can provide steady income, but also have their risks. Dividend payers may cut payouts, for instance, if their earnings fall. In this month, the strategy also had more exposure to the Yield factor over its peers. More information on a fund and its respective category's factor exposure can be found in the Factor Profile module within the Portfolio section. 

 The portfolio is overweight in consumer cyclical and energy relative to the category average by 11.8 and 3.4 percentage points, respectively. The sectors with low exposure compared to category peers are healthcare and technology, underweight the average by 11.5 and 9.3 percentage points of assets, respectively. The strategy owns 328 securities and its assets are more dispersed than peers in the category. In particular, 7.9% of the strategy's assets are concentrated in the top 10 fund holdings, compared to the category’s 26.3% average.

High

Process

WisdomTree’s team is valuable but does not stand out as one of the industry's best, warranting an Average People Pillar rating. There’s a deep bench of five managers listed on the fund. Together, they manage a total of 114 strategies, with a Bronze asset-weighted average Morningstar Medalist Rating, demonstrating their potential to deliver positive alpha relative to the category median in aggregate.  

 Note: This People Pillar rating is indirectly assigned by an analyst. Morningstar analysts evaluate the People Pillar for passive products at the brand level and may also differentiate by asset class. There is at least one other passive strategy at the firm that is covered by a Morningstar analyst, so the People Pillar rating of the fund is inherited from the rating that the Morningstar analyst assigned to investment vehicles under the same brand name.

Average

People

WisdomTree is improving, but its shaky global fund lineup and uncertain trajectory hold its rating to Below Average. 

WisdomTree’s research organization has long been a strength. Under CIO Jeremy Schwartz, the team has generated creative, economically sound ideas and evolved them into investable products, like the efficient core series. A recent focus on investor education spawned the Portfolio Analysis Tools Hub, an online platform that taps the team’s brainpower to help investors make better investment decisions.

The firm’s product lineup is a mixed bag. To complement its core lineup of fundamentally weighted strategies, WisdomTree has recently launched funds targeting established factors instead of trendy themes—an encouraging reorientation. Yet the shutdown of WisdomTree U.S. Growth and Momentum ETF calls WisdomTree’s commitment to these funds into question, and vestiges from its laxer product-development era look ripe for closure. Its European lineup features risky trading tools that are hard for investors to use well. 

WisdomTree’s future may hinge on WisdomTree Prime, its blockchain-based digital wallet. The launch reflects founder and CEO Jonathan Steinberg’s conviction in the disruptive potential of the blockchain. Prime shouldn’t hurt WisdomTree fund investors (most funds on the platform are zero-fee), but it may distract the firm from shoring up its core offering.

Below Average

Parent

WisdomTree US SmallCap Quality Growth Fund

QSML tracks a market cap-weighted index of US small-cap growth companies that exhibit the strongest quality characteristics relative to their peers.

WisdomTree US MidCap Quality Growth Fund

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WisdomTree Investments has added two new ETFs to its roster. The firm launched two new quality growth ETFs on Thursday, adding to its existing suite, led by the WisdomTree Floating Rate Treasury Fund (USFR) and the WisdomTree U.S. Quality Dividend Growth Fund (DGRW) which each have more than $10 billion in AUM.

WisdomTree Launches 2 Quality Growth ETFs

WisdomTree Inc

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--WisdomTree, Inc. (NYSE: WT), a global financial innovator, announced today the launch of the U.S. MidCap Quality Growth Fund (QMID) and U.S. SmallCap Quality Growth Fund (QSML) on the NASDAQ. QMID and QSML seek to track the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the WisdomTree U.S. MidCap Quality Growth Index1 and WisdomTree U.S. SmallCap Quality Growth Index2, respectively. Both funds have expense ratios of 0.38%. QMID and QSML aim to identify stoc.

News for WisdomTree US SmallCap Quality Growth Fund ETF (QSML)