Nasdaq Just for Funds: U.S. Quality Dividend Growth Fund (DGRW)

Danielle Rutsky:

Hi, NASDAQ followers. I'm Daniel Rutsky, ETF, senior Product Manager here at Nasdaq Market site with Dave Gron from WisdomTree as they ring the closing bell. Today we are here to talk about their symbol, DGRW.

Can you tell me a little bit about this fund? 

Dave Graichen:

Absolutely. We're here to talk about our US Quality Dividend Fund. It's been around for a little over a decade now. It's been one of our top performing core funds for, for WisdomTree. And we're really excited to be here today celebrating the 10th anniversary.

What do you think has differentiated DGRW to make it a five-star Morningstar fund that has been in investor's portfolios for 10 years? 

Yeah, No, it's great. Great question. I think that when you take a really good look at the fund and, and what really separates it is that in the past 10 years, we've actually beaten the S&P 500 on performance without really holding a core of those top seven tech funds that have advanced.

We do a very good job screening for quality and for dividend growth. And that's really provided the key results that we've seen over the last decade. 

Danielle Rutsky:

That's amazing. And who has your target market been for this fund over this time? 

Dave Graichen:

So I would say that our target market or our target investor in this fund is someone with, you know, kind of a strategic long core, long-term time horizon. One that's not just in it to hold it for a year or two. Over time we've really shown in this fund that, you know, we can compete with the S&P 500 and outperform.

But if you look back at, let's just say 2022 for instance, we saw a big dip in the marketplace. It was down around 20%, maybe the S&P was down close to 20%. DGRW was only down 6.4% at that time. So we do a very good job reducing volatility of the overall market. And the performance has really been there over the last decade.

Danielle Rutsky:

So long-term investment horizon. 

Dave Graichen:

Exactly.

Danielle Rutsky:

That's great. Excellent. What makes the WisdomTree strategy so unique? 

Dave Graichen:

You know, I think what makes it truly unique is the way that we screen for quality and for dividend growth.

We have an opportunity to, once an, a large cap name becomes, you know, starts issuing a dividend and we, that immediately enters our screens. If you look back to, I believe in 2012, Apple released their first dividend. We were able to, when our fund went live in 2013, to incorporate into our fund immediately. I think a lot of our competitors have more of a broader scan scope on what they look for in dividends. There's a lot of dividend funds out there. We just have the ability to, to screen for them and enter them, you know, directly into our funds.

Danielle Rutsky:

Amazing. Thank you so much. 

Dave Graichen:

Thanks.