XLY vs IYC vs XRT: Consumer Discretionary and Retail ETF Holdings

XLY and IYC are consumer-discretionary sector funds, but their index providers do not define the sector with the same classification system. XLY follows the Consumer Discretionary Select Sector Index, which takes eligible consumer-discretionary companies from the S&P 500 using GICS classifications. IYC follows a Russell 1000 consumer-discretionary index classified under ICB. XRT instead follows a retail index drawn from the S&P Total Market Index. Its eligible retail groups include food and drug retailers and consumer-staples merchandise retailers as well as discretionary retailers.

That makes XRT useful as a retail-industry comparison, but not a like-for-like substitute for a broad consumer-discretionary fund. A retailer can sell discretionary goods, groceries, or both; the retail index can include it because of its industry classification even when its business is not in the consumer-discretionary sector. XLY and IYC also include businesses such as hotels, restaurants, automobiles, media, and consumer services that are outside XRT’s retail scope.

The comparison below uses September 24, 2026 holdings snapshots from the issuers: XLY’s daily workbook, IYC’s holdings CSV, and XRT’s daily workbook. The equity rows contain 47 tickers for XLY, 156 for IYC, and 74 for XRT after excluding cash, money-market holdings, and derivatives. These are counts of equity positions in those files, not a guarantee that the funds will keep the same number of positions. Always check the current issuer file before using a dated weight.

XLY’s Select Sector index uses float-adjusted market-capitalization weighting subject to diversification limits. At scheduled reweighting, a constituent is capped at 25%; the combined weight of constituents individually above 4.8% is limited to 50%. These rules restrain the largest positions when the uncapped weights would be too concentrated, but they do not keep every live fund holding continuously at its reset weight. See the S&P index overview and U.S. index methodology.

IYC’s index uses a different set of 1940 Act-oriented limits. At its quarterly review, no individual constituent may exceed 15%, and constituents individually above 4.5% together may not exceed 22.5%. Its daily cap test uses a 24% combined limit for names above 4.8%. The Russell 1000 universe and ICB sector classification also differ from the S&P 500 and GICS basis used by XLY. Similar fund labels therefore do not imply identical membership. See the iShares IYC profile, Russell 1000 ICB Capped Index information, and FTSE Russell capping guide.

XRT’s benchmark starts from a much broader U.S. equity universe and reweights eligible retail names toward equal weights, with liquidity and constituent caps applied by the index methodology. The S&P list includes apparel, automotive, broadline, computer and electronics, consumer-staples merchandise, drug, food, and other specialty retail. The modified equal-weight design gives smaller retail companies more influence than a simple market-cap-weighted basket would. It does not make XRT a broad consumer-sector fund or guarantee equal weights between index reviews. See the XRT issuer profile, S&P Retail Select Industry Index page, and Select Industry methodology.

The three rule sets affect both breadth and concentration. A cap can restrain the largest constituent in XLY or IYC; a modified equal-weight reset can distribute XRT’s exposure across a larger range of retailers. Differences in the eligible universe matter just as much: XRT can hold a small or mid-cap retailer outside the Russell 1000 and S&P 500, while XLY can hold consumer businesses that are not retailers at all.

The figure below is conceptual. It groups familiar retail categories into three baskets to show that a fund’s label and its index rules define different collections. The baskets and goods are not actual securities, index weights, or portfolio data. The holdings table and issuer files carry the numerical evidence.

XLY’s largest two names, Amazon and Tesla, together made up 41.69% of the fund’s disclosed net assets. The top-ten total was more than four times XRT’s, even though XRT’s holdings include some of the same retailers. IYC sat between the two on top-ten concentration, but it still had substantial weights in Amazon and Tesla.

IYC’s published file reports weights to two decimal places; XLY and XRT publish finer precision. The top-ten totals above add the weights at their source precision and round the result for display. Equity weights in the files summed to 99.896699% for XLY, 99.86% for IYC, and 99.894964% for XRT. Small cash or other portfolio lines account for why the equity total is below 100%. No weights were rescaled to force the equity holdings to 100%.

The leading XRT holding uses ticker VSXY. Victoria’s Secret announced that its common stock would change from VSCO to VSXY effective June 2, 2026, in a May 21, 2026 Form 8-K. The source file’s ticker is retained as published so that the overlap calculation matches the issuer snapshot; it refers to Victoria’s Secret & Co. common stock. See the company’s ticker announcement and SEC filing.

For each pair, we matched exact reported equity tickers and added the weight of every matched ticker within each fund. The percentages below use each fund’s original net-asset denominator: they are not renormalized across equities. Cash, money-market positions, and derivatives are excluded. Weights are summed at the precision each issuer published and rounded only for display.

The first two directional percentages answer a separate question for each fund: what share of its own disclosed portfolio sat in names that appeared in both files? The last column, written as the sum of the lower weight for each exact matched ticker, is a symmetric measure of how much weight can be paired at those ticker weights. For example, XLY and XRT put different amounts in their ten common names, so neither directional value equals the 11.245531% minimum-weight sum.

An exact-ticker count is not an issuer-level merger. Two lines with different tickers may represent separate listings or share classes of the same company; this method keeps them separate. It also is not a return-correlation estimate: it says nothing about whether the stocks’ prices moved together in the past or will do so later. The IYC-side results have lower source precision because its file rounds weights to two decimals.

XLY and IYC shared 46 names and most of XLY’s displayed portfolio weight. Their top-ten overlap included Amazon, Tesla, Home Depot, McDonald’s, and TJX. That is consistent with two broad consumer-discretionary indexes containing many of the same large U.S. companies while applying different classification and capping rules. By contrast, XLY and XRT shared only ten tickers, and Ross Stores was the only name in both top tens. IYC and XRT shared 34 tickers, yet none of XRT’s top ten appeared in IYC’s top ten. These examples show why a count of shared holdings alone can hide very different weight profiles.

QQQ tracks the Nasdaq-100, a multi-industry index of large non-financial companies listed on Nasdaq. It is not a consumer-sector fund, but its largest names can be significant positions in consumer ETFs. See Invesco’s QQQ profile and the Nasdaq-100 methodology. Using the same September 24 issuer date and exact equity tickers from QQQ’s issuer holdings data:

Amazon (AMZN) and Tesla were among the shared top-ten names for XLY and QQQ, and for IYC and QQQ. XRT’s five shared QQQ tickers were Amazon (AMZN), Costco (COST), O’Reilly Automotive (ORLY), Ross Stores (ROST), and Walmart (WMT); only Ross Stores (ROST) was in XRT’s top ten on that date. This distinction matters: QQQ has meaningful consumer-company overlap without being a retail or consumer-discretionary fund. Its own index covers other industries too.

The QQQ issuer data file contains 106 rows for the date, including non-equity lines. The calculation uses its 101 equity rows and excludes currency, futures, and cash-like entries. As with the three consumer ETFs, weights remain on their original fund denominators. For a separate comparison of QQQ’s and the S&P 500’s baskets, see QQQ vs. VOO. Vanguard’s public holdings snapshot was not aligned to September 24, so no same-date VOO overlap is substituted here.

Suppose an account holds $5,000 of XRT and $5,000 of QQQ. Applying the September 24 weights, the five common ticker names represented 7.311774% of the XRT allocation and 8.514202% of the QQQ allocation:

• XRT’s share assigned to those names: $5,000 × 0.07311774 = $365.59
• QQQ’s share assigned to those names: $5,000 × 0.08514202 = $425.71
• Combined dollars assigned to the shared ticker set: about $791.30, or 7.91% of the $10,000 ETF allocation

This adds the account dollars assigned to the common tickers across both fund positions. It does not mean those companies are one position, that they have identical business risks, or that 7.91% of the account will move together. To calculate the total weight of a particular ticker in a multi-fund account, multiply each fund allocation by that ticker’s weight in that fund, add the dollars, and divide by the account’s total value. If the same company appears under a different ticker, the exact-match table will not join it automatically.

At publication, the XLY, IYC, and XRT issuer pages list gross annual expense ratios of 0.08%, 0.37%, and 0.35%, respectively. On a constant $10,000 balance for one year, the simple annualized arithmetic is $8, $37, and $35. The $29 gap between XLY and IYC is only a static expense-ratio comparison.

The calculation is not a bill or a total-cost forecast. Fund expenses accrue against changing assets, and an investor also faces the fund’s trading spread, possible brokerage charges, market impact, taxes, and tracking difference. A fund with a lower stated expense ratio can still be a poor fit if its index covers the wrong market segment. Recheck each issuer’s current fee and prospectus before making a cost comparison.

These holdings explain what the funds owned on one date and how their published equity weights overlapped. They do not establish that one index is better, that a more concentrated fund is always riskier, or that shared companies have a particular return correlation. The constituents and weights change as prices move, businesses are reclassified, indexes rebalance, and fund managers handle cash or corporate actions.

The weight tables also do not capture every source of investor experience. A return comparison would need a chosen period, consistent price or total-return data, treatment of distributions, and a stated currency. An account-level review would also need actual positions in other ETFs and direct stocks. This article compares basket construction and a dated holdings snapshot; it does not rank historical performance, value the companies, or recommend a ticker.

For another sector-fund comparison, see XLE vs. VDE vs. IYE and XLK vs. VGT vs. FTEC. For general fund-cost mechanics, see ETF expense ratio vs. total cost and ETF tracking difference vs. tracking error.