Zacks Earnings Consistent Portfolio ETF

Zacks Earnings Consistent Portfolio ETF (ZECP) is an actively managed fund that holds about 60 US stocks chosen for steady earnings. As of May 31, 2026, its largest holdings were Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft. Zacks picks companies whose profits held up well through past recessions, and the fund aims to limit losses. The trade-off is cost. Its 0.55% expense ratio is more than double the 0.25% average of similar funds and higher than all eight it is compared with.

• Over the year to Oct 27, 2026, ZECP returned +11.6%, 5th of 9 among similar funds.
• Its 5-year annualized return was +9.2%.
• Its worst full calendar year was 2022 (-13.4%); its best was 2024 (+17.3%).
• The deepest fall in its price history was 21.9% (Dec 29, 2021 to Oct 12, 2022), recovered by Jan 23, 2024.

As of May 31, 2026, the fund held 60 securities; the ten largest made up 42.79% of assets.

By sector

• Over the three months to May 31, 2026, investors added a net $22.4M (creations minus redemptions, per the N-PORT report).
• Monthly total returns reported for that quarter: -5.98%, +7.51%, +2.09%.

ZECP does not track an index. Zacks, the fund's advisor, starts with the 750 largest stocks listed in the US, which can include large, mid-sized and small companies. It then screens them for stable earnings per share (EPS), which is a company's profit divided by its number of shares. It checks how much EPS has varied over the past 15 years, or less if a company is younger, and how much it is forecast to vary over the next two years. The least variable companies move on to the next step.

Next, the portfolio manager uses judgment. The manager looks at how consistent a company's financial filings are, how profitable it is, how its earnings held up in recessions, its valuation, and whether its revenue and earnings estimates are rising. The manager narrows the list to 100 companies. The fund then holds the 50 to 120 with the most stable past and forecast EPS. As of May 31, 2026, it held 60 stocks, and the top 10 made up 42.8% of assets. The prospectus summary gives no fixed weighting formula, but the weights are far from equal: Alphabet was 8.4%, Apple 7.9% and Microsoft 6.9%.

The portfolio is usually rebalanced every week, and also after events such as mergers. Even so, portfolio turnover was 12%, which is modest. It is a plain stock fund that uses no leverage, options or derivatives.

• ZECP charges 0.55% a year, versus an average of 0.25% for the similar funds below (9th of 9, cheapest first).
• Of that, 0.44% is the management fee; the rest covers other fund expenses.
• Using the prospectus's standard example, $10,000 invested would cost about $56 in the first year and $689 over 10 years (assuming a 5% annual return).

It is a 60-stock portfolio of US companies with steady earnings, so it could fill part of a US stock allocation, though it costs more than most alternatives.

ZECP launched in August 2021, so it has no record through the 2008 crisis or the 2020 COVID crash. Its one big test was the 2022 bear market, when it fell 21.3%. Its deepest drop, 21.9%, bottomed in October 2022 and took about 15 months to recover, in January 2024. Its worst calendar year was 2022, down 13.3%. Anyone selling shares for spending money during that stretch would have locked in losses. It has moved less than the market: its one-year beta was 0.64 as of October 27, 2026. Beta measures how much a fund tends to move when the market moves. Income is small, with a trailing 0.71% yield paid once a year. On $10,000, costs come to $56 after one year and $689 over 10 years in the SEC's standard example. Past results don't predict the future, and a plan should look at the whole portfolio, not one fund.

Matched by holdings overlap from the latest N-PORT reports.