The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) is on the verge of crossing $100 billion in assets for the first time. Earlier this week, the fund touched $98.5 billion.
As I wrote a few days ago, the equal-weighted version of the S&P 500 has been having a strong year, outpacing the traditional market-cap-weighted index. RSP is up more than 13% for the year, against roughly 9% for the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO). That gain, combined with nearly $12 billion of inflows in 2026, is what’s carrying the fund toward the milestone.
The investment case for RSP has been well understood for years. It’s a way to reduce concentration risk. The top 10 stocks now make up almost 40% of the traditional S&P 500, and the worry has been that if a handful of them stumble, they could drag the whole index down with them.
That theoretical risk never really played out. Instead, the biggest companies just kept getting bigger, and reducing exposure to them backfired, with the traditional index steadily outpacing the equal-weighted version.
This year, though, the pattern has shifted, at least a little. Eight of the 10 biggest stocks entering the year are lagging the broad market, with Apple and Broadcom the only exceptions. Spreading exposure evenly across all 500 names, rather than leaning into the biggest of the big, has finally paid off.
Even so, equal weight has a lot of catching up to do. Over the past five years, RSP is up 53% versus 82% for VOO. Over the past decade, it’s up 206% against 304%. One good year has barely narrowed that gap.
Of course, this could be the start of a longer period of outperformance for RSP, but it’s far too early to say. And investors should be cognizant of the bet they are making with the fund.
What the ETF does is trim its winners and add to its laggards, which is not a minor tilt, but a genuine bet against the pattern that has defined the market for years, where a small group of companies generates the bulk of the gains.
In any case, there’s now close to $100 billion riding on the strategy.
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