GTEK ETF up 56.6% YTD, outperforms Vanguard’s VGT

Goldman Sachs’ actively managed Future Tech Leaders Equity ETF (GTEK) has risen 56.6% year-to-date, while Vanguard’s Information Technology ETF (VGT) is up 23.76% over the same period. GTEK returned 83.4% over the past 12 months, compared with a roughly 50.2% average for technology equity ETFs, with these figures current as of June 23.

GTEK follows an active, bottom-up stock-picking process and restricts its investable universe to companies with market capitalizations below $100 billion. Fund managers screen potential holdings using fundamental growth and quality metrics. They can reweight or replace positions when a company’s outlook weakens. The fund may include technology-enabled companies outside traditional software and hardware, such as firms in healthcare and direct marketing retail. GTEK charges an expense ratio of 0.75%.

By contrast, many broad, market-cap-weighted technology ETFs allocate more heavily to the largest technology firms. Those funds concentrate exposure in the biggest names by market value. GTEK targets smaller and mid-sized tech and tech-enabled companies rather than the largest incumbents.

Market conditions that have supported recent gains include strong investor interest in artificial intelligence and AI-related applications, which has boosted shares of companies tied to those technologies. Performance differences between active, smaller-cap-focused funds and large-cap index funds reflect differing stock-weighting approaches and sector compositions.

Investors comparing GTEK with index-based technology ETFs should note the fund’s active mandate, its market-cap limit, and its 75 basis-point fee when assessing fit within a portfolio.