Does SCHD overlap with VTI? I measured every holding — 99.8% of it is already inside

Ivan K — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 18:37:05 +0000

Does SCHD overlap with VTI? I measured every holding — 99.8% of it is already inside

On a look-through of all 100 holdings as of 25 August 2026, 99.8% of SCHD's weight sits inside
VTI. Held alongside a total-market fund, Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF adds almost no new
companies — it re-weights ones you already own.

I worked through SCHD's holdings and compared them against a thousand-plus US-listed equity
ETFs. Three findings, none of which appears on any published fund profile I could find.

SCHD, as of 25 August 2026


Share of SCHD's weight already inside VTI	99.8%
Share of VTI that SCHD accounts for	7.3%
Forward P/E	16.6× — cheapest of the five largest US dividend ETFs
Trailing P/E against its own 9-year record	20.2×, the 95th percentile
Companies carrying half the fund	13, of 100 holdings

How much does SCHD overlap with VTI?

99.8% of SCHD's weight sits inside VTI as of 25 August 2026. Against VT it is 99.3%, against
VYM 99.3%, and against SCHX 97.3%. Going the other way, SCHD accounts for only 7.3% of VTI — it
sits inside the broad fund rather than beside it.

SCHD's weight already held by	Share
VTI	99.8%
VT	99.3%
VYM	99.3%
SCHX	97.3%
VIG	55.0%

That last row is why the measure is worth trusting. VIG is the same category and the same
dividend framing, and it comes back at 55% — VIG is genuinely a different portfolio from VTI;
SCHD is largely the same one, re-weighted. The calculation discriminates rather than simply
debunking everything it touches.

Should you hold SCHD and VTI together?

That is a decision, not a number, but here is the number the decision turns on: holding SCHD
alongside VTI adds essentially no companies you do not already own — 99.8% of SCHD's weight is
inside VTI — so what you are buying is a tilt in weighting, not additional diversification.
Whether a dividend-quality tilt is worth holding is a separate question, and a reasonable one.
It is just not a diversification question.

Is SCHD expensive right now?

Both answers are true at once, and this is the finding I care about most.

Against its peers, SCHD is cheap. Rolling every holding's valuation up to fund level, SCHD
traded at 16.6× forward earnings on 25 August 2026 — the cheapest of the five largest US
dividend ETFs, against a category median of 16.9×.

Fund	Forward P/E, 25 Aug 2026
SCHD	16.6×
VYM	18.3×
DGRO	19.4×
VIG	20.7×
CGDV	21.4×

Against itself, SCHD is expensive. Measured against its own nine-year record, SCHD's trailing
P/E of 20.2× on 25 August 2026 sits at the 95th percentile — its median over that period is
17.1× and its low is 13.0×.

Funds screening for dividend growth select companies the market already prices richly, so the
whole peer group re-rates together. The comparison table moves as one and tells you nothing
about level.

Only one of those two numbers appears on a comparison table. The peer view and the
historical view point in opposite directions, and the view almost everyone uses is the one that
cannot see it.

Is SCHD concentrated?

Yes — 13 of SCHD's 100 companies carry half the fund, and its ten largest are 42.3% of it, as
of 25 August 2026. On effective holdings — the equally-weighted count that would produce the
same concentration — SCHD behaves like a 34-stock portfolio, more concentrated than 88% of US
dividend funds.

Concentration is about weight distribution, not holding count. "100 holdings" is true and tells
you almost nothing.

Why none of this is on a fact sheet

Not because anyone is hiding it. Each of these figures requires looking through the fund to
the companies underneath, mapping those companies to a stable identity so they can be matched
across funds, and recomputing as holdings change. A fact sheet is a snapshot of one fund; these
are relationships between funds, and they move.

On ETF Copilot's nightly recomputation across the US-listed equity universe — which is where the
peer-group and percentile figures above come from — doing this once for one fund is an
afternoon's work. Doing it every night for all of them is the part that took a while.

Check it on any pair you hold

Take two funds you hold together and ask what share of the smaller one's weight already sits
inside the larger. Above 95% and you own one position with extra steps. At 55%, like VIG
against VTI, you own two things.

That question is answerable. It just isn't answered on the fund's own page.

I build ETF Copilot — disclosing that it's mine. Every figure above
is from its nightly recomputation, dated 25 August 2026, and is checkable on the site without an
account.

DEV Community: Ivan K

Does SCHD overlap with VTI? I measured every holding — 99.8% of it is already inside

Does SCHD overlap with VTI? I measured every holding — 99.8% of it is already inside

How much does SCHD overlap with VTI?

Should you hold SCHD and VTI together?

Is SCHD expensive right now?

Is SCHD concentrated?

Why none of this is on a fact sheet

Check it on any pair you hold