COPX vs. LIT vs. REMX: Copper, Lithium, and Critical-Minerals ETF Holdings

The ticker tells you which fund you are looking at; its index rules and actual holdings tell you where the money is allocated. COPX seeks to track the Solactive Global Copper Miners Total Return Index. LIT follows the Solactive Global Lithium Index, whose eligible companies can work in lithium mining, exploration, related activities, or lithium-battery production. REMX tracks the MVIS Global Rare Earth/Strategic Metals Index, which includes businesses mining, refining, or recycling specified strategic metals and rare-earth elements.

That makes the basket boundaries different. COPX can hold diversified miners whose copper operations are only part of a larger company. LIT can hold battery and electronics manufacturers, not just lithium producers. REMX can own lithium companies because lithium is one of the metals in its index definition, alongside materials such as tungsten, molybdenum, cobalt, and rare earths. ETF names are a starting description, not a complete holdings definition.

The issuer pages report annual expense ratios of 0.65% for COPX, 0.75% for LIT, and 0.53% gross and net for REMX as checked September 26, 2026. VanEck states that REMX’s expenses are limited to 0.57% through at least May 1, 2027, subject to exclusions in its fee agreement. The current profiles and LIT prospectus govern if terms change: COPX profile, LIT profile, and REMX holdings and fund page.

I used issuer holdings files dated September 24, 2026 for all three funds: the COPX CSV, the LIT CSV, and VanEck’s REMX holdings feed. Each row’s weight is a percentage of fund net assets, displayed to two decimal places. The comparison counts common-equity issuers; it does not treat cash, receivables, currency balances, or rights as ordinary operating-company shares.

These counts are not interchangeable with every product page’s headline “holdings” number. LIT’s 40 ordinary equity entries sit alongside a rights instrument and a zero-value line. VanEck’s REMX page says 37 holdings; its dated feed has 32 stock rows, five currency rows, and one additional aggregate “Other/Cash” row. That last line is not another company. The data files also do not explain every residual between displayed weights and 100%, so I leave those differences unreconciled rather than assign a cause.

The source precision matters. The LIT downloadable CSV reports TDK at 5.55% on September 24, while Global X’s embedded September 24 table displays 5.56%. I use the dated downloadable file consistently in the calculations below.

Solactive’s COPX guideline limits its target index to 20–40 copper-mining companies. It uses free-float market capitalization as a starting point and applies a 4.75% per-company cap at selection, alongside eligibility and liquidity rules. The fund’s September 24 holdings show several weights above 5%. A selection-time index cap is not a promise that the fund’s live portfolio remains below that level: prices move between index reviews, and company weights drift with them.

Solactive’s lithium index uses a wider value-chain test. Companies may qualify through lithium mining or exploration, closely related work, or battery production. Its methodology starts from free-float market capitalization and applies category and concentration constraints, including a 20% maximum for mining companies and a 4% maximum for battery companies at an index review. The September 24 LIT file’s Rio Tinto weight is 22.66%, and Panasonic is 7.18%; these dated fund weights illustrate why a reader should distinguish review rules from weights after markets move.

MarketVector’s REMX rules screen for strategic-material and rare-earth exposure, then build a modified capitalization-weighted index. The February 2026 guide sets thematic thresholds of at least 50% of revenue or relevant mineral resources for new constituents, with a 25% retention threshold for existing constituents. Its metal list includes lithium. This is why LIT and REMX can share lithium producers even though one index covers a battery value chain and the other covers a broader minerals theme. The primary documents are the Solactive COPX guideline, the Solactive lithium guideline, and the February 2026 MVIS REMX guide.

The table uses issuer-file weights as a percentage of each fund’s net assets. The sums add the ten largest ordinary equity rows from the same September 24 snapshots; they are not normalized to the stock-only subtotal.

COPX is comparatively spread across its first ten, with each holding between 4.16% and 5.63%. LIT has a very different concentration point: Rio Tinto alone is 22.66%, more than the combined weight of several battery makers that follow it. So “lithium ETF” does not mean the largest position must be a pure-play lithium miner. REMX’s first two lines, SQM and Albemarle, together contribute 15.79%; its next positions bring the top five to 34.48%.

The overlap is matched at the company level, not by requiring the exchange ticker to be identical. That matters for Ganfeng, where LIT holds a mainland China listing and REMX holds the Hong Kong listing, and for issuer names whose ticker labels differ. The figures below compare the fund weights of each matched issuer in the September 24 files.

Adding the lower weight for each issuer produces 14.61%. That is a symmetric same-dollar comparison of the direct common-company weights: every shared issuer currently has a lower displayed weight in LIT than in REMX. It is not the percentage of the two funds that will move together, a return-correlation statistic, or a measure of all indirect supply-chain exposure. COPX has no issuer match with LIT or REMX among the 40, 40, and 32 regular equity positions in these dated files. That does not mean a copper miner has no economic connection to battery or strategic-material businesses.

“No direct overlap” above applies only to the COPX, LIT, and REMX equity baskets. A broad materials fund can own some of the same miners while also holding chemical, steel, packaging, and other companies. For example, Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) is 5.01% of COPX and appears in the September 24 XLB and IYM holdings compared in our XLB, VAW, and IYM materials ETF analysis. Combining COPX with a broad materials fund can therefore add a second direct position in FCX even though the broader fund has a much wider mandate.

The difference between direct holdings and economic links also matters. COPX, LIT, and REMX all own operating companies, not copper, lithium, or rare-earth inventories for the fund. A diversified miner may earn revenue from several commodities, while a battery maker may be affected by lithium input costs without owning a mine. A materials index, a mining ETF, a physical commodity product, and a battery-industry ETF are different exposures. See index constituents, fund holdings, and creation baskets for the distinctions between those lists.

Mine grades, recoveries, labor and energy costs, permitting, project timelines, capital spending, debt, and currency translation all affect a miner’s earnings. A higher copper price can help a producer, but it does not guarantee a higher share price if costs rise, production falls, a project is delayed, or financing needs expand. The same logic applies to lithium and rare-earth firms, whose output mix, contract structure, processing capacity, and customer base differ.

Battery and technology companies add another layer. Their results depend on demand, manufacturing utilization, pricing, inventories, product mix, and competition. Lithium demand growth does not translate mechanically into profit growth for every company held in LIT; some hold downstream businesses whose margins can respond differently from those of a mine. REMX’s companies also span different metals and stages of the supply chain, so a shared “strategic materials” label does not remove company-specific risk.

The holdings are international and can be affected by exchange access, local-market rules, corporate governance, policy changes, export restrictions, taxes, and currency moves. The issuer files provide a snapshot of selected securities; they do not measure reserve quality, mine economics, environmental liabilities, contract prices, or the percentage of each company’s profit that comes from a specific mineral. For those questions, use current company filings and fund documents rather than extrapolating from an ETF name or a top-ten table.

At the issuer-listed rates checked September 26, a hypothetical flat $10,000 balance corresponds to about $65 per year in COPX, $75 in LIT, or $53 in REMX: balance multiplied by the annual expense ratio. These are simple illustrations, not invoices. Fund expenses accrue against assets over time, so the realized amount changes with the balance and may change if a fee waiver or expense ratio changes.

The expense ratio is not the full cost of owning or trading ETF shares. Bid–ask spread, brokerage charges, market impact, taxes, and the trading cost of portfolio changes are separate. REMX’s current 0.53% net ratio is also subject to the stated expense limitation; check the prospectus for its duration and exclusions. Compare those items with the intended holding period and the liquidity of the actual listing. Our guide to ETF expense ratios and total cost explains why one percentage alone is incomplete.

Start with the company activities the index permits. COPX targets copper miners; LIT includes lithium-related businesses from the mine and exploration stage through battery production; REMX covers a wider set of strategic metals and rare-earth miners, refiners, and recyclers. Then inspect the current holdings to see which part of that stated universe dominates the actual fund.

Next, align the holding dates and denominators. Separate ordinary company shares from cash, rights, and other accounting lines. Add top-ten weights from one dated file, and match common issuers by name or a stable security identifier before counting overlap. If you match different exchange listings of one company, say that the result is issuer-level. Do not call an overlap percentage a correlation or treat the fund’s holding count as a diversification score.

Finally, read the weighting rules, expenses, and risks together. This September 24 snapshot shows why COPX, LIT, and REMX can all be called materials or critical-mineral ETFs while holding different businesses and assigning different weights to their shared issuers. Holdings change, methodology rules can change, and these dated figures are for comparing basket construction—not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any fund.