# RSP vs SPY

Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF against SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust.

Canonical page: https://tickerinside.com/compare/rsp-vs-spy/
Prices through 2026-09-04. RSP holdings as published 2026-09-05, SPY 2026-09-03.
Licence: CC BY 4.0, attribution to TickerInside.

## The short answer

Every company in one is in the other, 100.0% of each by weight, and the overlap is still only 44.5%. The whole difference is the weighting: SPY's ten largest positions are 38.1% of the fund, RSP's are 3.2%. RSP charges 0.20% against 0.09%.

## Key figures

| Measure | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Holdings overlap by weight | 44.5% |
| Companies held by both | 503 |
| Share of RSP held in common | 100.0% |
| Share of SPY held in common | 100.0% |
| Correlation of weekly returns, 3 years | 0.85 |
| Cost per year | RSP 0.2%, SPY 0.09% |
| Return, 3 years | RSP 55.8%, SPY 79.4% |
| Worst fall, 3 years | RSP -15.5%, SPY -16.9% |
| Volatility, annualised | RSP 13.2%, SPY 14.4% |
| Positions | RSP 503, SPY 504 |

## Analysis

### Identical membership, 55.5% apart by weight

This is the one pair on the site where the list of companies is not the question. RSP holds the 503 members of the S&P 500 at equal weight; SPY holds the same companies, 504 lines, at market weight. The overlap by weight, 44.5%**, counts each company at the smaller of its two weights, so it measures how far the two weightings are from each other and nothing else.

### Where the weight goes

Microsoft, one of SPY's largest positions, is one equal slice of RSP among 503. The ten largest positions carry 38.1% of SPY and 3.2% of RSP. Salesforce, CrowdStrike, Amgen and Palantir top RSP's list at the moment only because they have risen since the last quarterly rebalance, and the next one will push them back to the average.

### What the equal weighting has cost in this stretch

Over three years SPY returned 79.4%** and RSP 55.8%; over five years 85.0% against 54.5%; over the past year 20.3% against 18.1%. The gap is the largest companies outperforming the rest, which equal weighting is built to dilute. RSP was the calmer fund at 13.2% volatility against 14.4% and fell -15.5% at its worst against -16.9%, and it yields 1.46% against 0.98%.

### Cost, and a correlation that has been loosening

RSP charges 0.20% against 0.09% for SPY, $11 a year more on $10,000. Weekly returns correlated at 0.91 over five years, 0.85 over three and 0.72 over the past year, a widening spread for two funds holding the same companies. Held together, they land between the two weightings, closer to SPY the more of it there is.

## Largest positions held by both

| Ticker | Company | In RSP | In SPY | Counted as overlap |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CRM | Salesforce Inc | 0.29% | 0.32% | 0.29% |
| PLTR | Palantir Technologies Inc | 0.25% | 0.63% | 0.25% |
| AMGN | Amgen Inc | 0.25% | 0.36% | 0.25% |
| CRWD | Crowdstrike Holdings Inc | 0.25% | 0.33% | 0.25% |
| MSFT | Microsoft Corp | 0.24% | 5.68% | 0.24% |
| TMO | Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc | 0.24% | 0.34% | 0.24% |
| PANW | Palo Alto Networks Inc | 0.24% | 0.4% | 0.24% |
| ANET | Arista Networks Inc | 0.24% | 0.3% | 0.24% |
| MRK | Merck & Co Inc | 0.24% | 0.56% | 0.24% |
| SCHW |  | 0.23% | 0.27% | 0.23% |
| GILD | Gilead Sciences Inc | 0.23% | 0.28% | 0.23% |
| BKNG | Booking Holdings Inc | 0.23% | 0.23% | 0.23% |
| DE | Deere & Co | 0.23% | 0.26% | 0.23% |
| ABT | Abbott Laboratories | 0.23% | 0.28% | 0.23% |
| NVDA | NVIDIA Corp | 0.22% | 8.29% | 0.22% |

## Covariance and correlation

Covariance is annualised and expressed in percent squared, so the diagonal is each fund's variance. Dividing the off-diagonal by the two volatilities returns the correlation.

| | RSP | SPY |
| --- | --- | --- |
| RSP | 174 | 160.6 |
| SPY | 160.6 | 207 |

Correlation over 1, 3 and 5 years: 0.72, 0.85, 0.91.

## Method

How every figure is produced: https://tickerinside.com/how-the-numbers-are-produced/
Machine readable version of this comparison: https://tickerinside.com/api/v1/compare/rsp-vs-spy.json