As a stock-picking investor, I want to have industrials in my portfolio. Over time I have added and removed industrials based on various factors. For example, I sold my mother-in-law’s Boeing shares when the problems with the 737 Max passenger jet developed. I’ve owned GE in the past but wouldn’t buy it now. My primary industrial investments currently are AYR, EAF, EBF, ETN, ITW, NOC, RSG, TRTN and WM. If you were to explore these, you would find that they pay dividends and are in various subsectors in the industrial category. Some are environmental (RSG, WM) and one is aerospace (NOC). One leases aircraft and two others are in the electrical components and equipment businesses.

Most of you don’t want to cherry pick from the industrials, but perhaps you might want to have a higher weighting of industrials in your portfolio. If I had to pick only one of the many to buy, it would probably be Vanguard’s VIS – Vanguard Industrials Index Fund ETF Shares. It has a rational expense ratio of 0.10% and has good diversification. However, it is a cap-weighted ETF, so that means the bigger industrials make up a sizable portion of the total investment. Boeing (BA) is the top holding, followed by Honeywell, Union Pacific (railroad) and United Technologies. Unfortunately, it also holds shares of GE. But GE would not cause me to remove VIS from consideration. It holds many good companies including the ones in my stock portfolio.

The following images give you a view of this ETF from 10,000 feet. The Wallmine link is also shown below. VIS has a good dividend growth story and you can quickly see that on Wallmine.

VIS INDUSTRIALS – SUB-SECTOR CLASSIFICATIONS
VIS Market Cap and Style
Other similar funds (from Fidelity Research XTF report)

Wallmine Link for VIS: https://wallmine.com/etf/VIS