ProShares S&P 500 Ex-Technology ETF (SPXT)

The ProShares S&P 500 Ex-Technology ETF (ticker SPXT) holds the 500 largest U.S. publicly traded companies, but systematically removes every technology and communication-services firm, leaving only the financials, industrials, consumer staples, energy, healthcare, materials, real estate, and utilities that constitute the “ex-tech” universe. It is a vehicle for investors who want broad U.S. stock exposure but wish to avoid or reduce their weight in the technology sector.

“A bet on the non-tech side of American capitalism.”

The strategic choice

The S&P 500 is the canonical benchmark for U.S. large-cap stocks, but it is heavily concentrated in technology companies and mega-cap technology firms in particular. As of typical market conditions, technology and communication services account for a large slice of the index’s market capitalization, often exceeding 25–30% of the whole. For an investor who wishes to own the broad market but believes technology is overvalued, or who holds technology elsewhere and wants diversification, or who simply prefers exposure to traditional industries, the S&P 500 Ex-Technology index offers a cleaner path than trying to hand-pick a subset of large caps.

SPXT tracks this ex-tech version directly. Its constituent universe includes leading banks, oil companies, industrial manufacturers, pharmaceutical firms, consumer brands, and real-estate trusts — the backbone of the S&P 500 minus the cluster of software and semiconductor giants that now dominate the headline returns.

What is excluded and why it matters

Technology, in the index methodology, is broadly defined. It includes software and hardware companies (Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia), semiconductor makers (Intel, AMD), semiconductor capital-equipment suppliers, e-commerce firms, and internet-focused companies like Amazon. The communications-services sector catches telecoms and media, including Meta and Alphabet. Remove those two categories and roughly one-quarter or more of the index’s weight is gone, which is not a small adjustment — it fundamentally changes the fund’s return profile and its sensitivity to tech-sector trends.

When technology stocks surge, SPXT lags the S&P 500. When technology stumbles, SPXT may outperform because it is tilted toward sectors that have not rallied as hard and may offer relative value. Over the very long term, the index has often tracked the broad market reasonably well, but multi-year periods of tech outperformance or underperformance create meaningful divergence from the standard S&P 500 benchmark.

Costs and practical trading

SPXT trades on NASDAQ with tight spreads and high daily volume, making it easy to buy and sell in size without moving the price. The expense ratio is low, typically in the range of 0.2–0.4% per year, reflecting the passive indexing approach. That cost is slightly higher than a plain S&P 500 index ETF, a trade-off for the sector exclusion.

The fund holds well over 400 constituents after the technology filter, so it retains genuine diversification. This is not a concentrated bet on a single sector or industry — it is still a broad market proxy, only one that deliberately underweights technology. A reader considering SPXT should review the current sector breakdown on the sponsor’s fact sheet and compare the fund’s recent returns against both the standard S&P 500 and sector-specific peers to understand whether the technology exclusion aligns with their market outlook and long-term goals.