JP Morgan Asset Management has expanded its ‘BetaBuilders’ suite of low-cost, passively managed ETFs in Europe with the launch of a US small-cap equities fund.
The JPMorgan BetaBuilders US Small Cap Equity UCITS ETF has been listed on London Stock Exchange in US dollars (Dist: BBSD LN; Acc: BBSC LN) and pound sterling (Dist: BBDS LN; Acc: BBCS LN) as well as on Xetra (Acc: JPSC GY) and Borsa Italiana (Acc: BBSC IM) in euros.
The ETF is linked to the Morningstar US Small Cap Target Market Exposure Index which consists of common stocks and real estate investment trusts (REITs) that fall between the ninety-fifth and ninety-ninth percentiles when ranking the US equity universe by full market capitalization.
The index is rebalanced on a quarterly basis and includes buffers to limit unnecessary turnover. Constituents are weighted by float-adjusted market cap.
The fund comes with an expense ratio of just 0.14% which makes it the joint-cheapest ETF in Europe delivering US small-cap exposure, matching the cost of the $70 million Invesco S&P SmallCap 600 UCITS ETF (USML LN).
Most other US small-cap ETFs in Europe charge fees of 0.30% or higher. This includes the largest ETFs in the space such as the $1.5 billion SPDR Russell 2000 US Small Cap UCITS ETF (R2US LN) which has an expense ratio of 0.30% and the socially responsible $1.3bn iShares MSCI USA Small Cap ESG Enhanced UCITS ETF (CUSS LN) which is priced at 0.43%.
The new listing expands JPMorgan’s BetaBuilders suite in Europe to ten funds. The only other equity ETF in the suite focuses on US large and mid-cap stocks, while the fixed income funds mainly target different maturity segments within US, UK, and eurozone government bond markets.