October 4, 2026 · BriMindInvest Research Team · 9 min read
There are now over 3,400 ETFs listed in the US alone. Most investors buy based on a ticker name and an expense ratio. That is like picking a car based on color and price. These five charts — all available on BriMindInvest's ETF in-depth reports — tell you whether an ETF actually does what you think it does.
We will use two real ETFs as running examples throughout: VistaShares AI Supercycle (AIS) and Invesco Semiconductors (PSI) — both semiconductor-adjacent thematic ETFs with very different construction philosophies.
A line chart that rebases both the ETF and the S&P 500 to 100 on the same start date, then plots their growth side by side. This is the single most important chart for any ETF purchase because it answers: “Am I getting something I cannot get from a cheap index fund?”
PSI outperforms over the full period (+26% vs +12%), but notice the deeper drawdown from Nov to Mar — a 14-point drop vs. SPY's 7 points. That volatility gap is the price of thematic concentration.
PSI has years of history, so you can see how it performed through the 2022 semiconductor selloff and the 2023-2024 AI recovery. AIS launched in late 2024, so the comparison window is shorter — but that itself is information. A thematic ETF with under 12 months of history cannot tell you how it handles a downturn, which means you are taking on uncertainty that the price does not reflect.
The same rebased-to-100 chart, but now comparing the ETF against its direct competitors — other ETFs targeting the same theme or sector. For semiconductor ETFs, the peer set includes SMH, SOXX, PSI, and AIS.
SMH leads (+38%) due to heavy NVDA/TSM weighting, PSI is in the middle (+26%), and SOXX trails (+22%). Same theme, very different outcomes — the ETF construction drives a 16-point gap.
SMH, SOXX, and PSI all target semiconductors but have returned meaningfully different amounts over the same periods because of concentration differences. SMH is heavily weighted toward NVDA and TSM; PSI is equal-weighted across 30 names. The “semiconductor ETF” label hides massive construction differences that only show up when you chart them against each other.
A color-coded grid showing how correlated the ETF's top holdings are with each other. Each cell ranges from -1 (perfect inverse correlation) to +1 (perfect correlation), with colors from green (low) through orange to red (high).
| NVDA | AMD | TSM | MU | MRVL | VRT | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVDA | 1.00 | 0.85 | 0.78 | 0.72 | 0.68 | 0.42 |
| AMD | 0.85 | 1.00 | 0.74 | 0.76 | 0.71 | 0.38 |
| TSM | 0.78 | 0.74 | 1.00 | 0.69 | 0.62 | 0.35 |
| MU | 0.72 | 0.76 | 0.69 | 1.00 | 0.65 | 0.40 |
| MRVL | 0.68 | 0.71 | 0.62 | 0.65 | 1.00 | 0.33 |
| VRT | 0.42 | 0.38 | 0.35 | 0.40 | 0.33 | 1.00 |
NVDA-AMD at 0.85 is a “sea of red” — they move almost in lockstep. But VRT (data center infrastructure) shows green cells in the 0.33-0.42 range, genuinely reducing risk within the theme.
A horizontal bar chart showing each top holding's 1-year return, sorted from best to worst. Green bars for positive returns, red for negative. This tells you who is actually driving the ETF's performance.
NVDA's +148% dwarfs everything else — this ETF is effectively a leveraged NVDA bet with decorative diversification. The next-best holding (TSM at +52%) is less than a third of NVDA's return.
Many semiconductor and AI ETFs owe a huge portion of their returns to a single stock: NVIDIA. The holdings attribution chart makes this obvious. If NVDA is up 150% and the next-best holding is up 30%, you should ask: do I want this ETF, or do I just want NVDA? Buying the individual stock is cheaper (zero expense ratio) and more honest about the bet you are making.
A projection chart showing how much the ETF's expense ratio costs you in actual dollars over 5, 10, 20, and 30 years — assuming a $10,000 initial investment and an 8% annualized return. The difference between a 0.10% and 0.75% expense ratio is not 0.65% — it is tens of thousands of dollars over a career.
| Time Horizon | 0.10% ER (SPY) | 0.35% ER (Typical) | 0.75% ER (Thematic) | Cost of Thematic vs. SPY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 years | $21,390 | $20,870 | $19,990 | $1,400 |
| 20 years | $45,750 | $43,560 | $39,960 | $5,790 |
| 30 years | $97,860 | $90,830 | $79,870 | $17,990 |
A thematic ETF with a 0.75% expense ratio costs you nearly $18,000 more than SPY over 30 years on a $10,000 investment. That is the performance hurdle the ETF must clear just to break even with the index — before even considering whether the theme outperforms.
At 30 years, the 0.75% thematic ETF leaves $17,990 on the table compared to SPY — that is the invisible cost of fees compounding against you.
Higher fees can be worth it if the ETF provides genuine exposure you cannot easily replicate — emerging themes with difficult-to-access companies, active management with a proven track record, or unique weighting methodologies that consistently capture a premium. The fee impact chart forces you to quantify that hurdle rate instead of hand-waving it.
Open the ETF's in-depth report on BriMindInvest and run through this checklist:
All five charts are available on BriMindInvest's ETF in-depth reports. Search for any ETF ticker and scroll to the analysis sections — performance vs. benchmark, peer comparison, correlation matrix, holdings attribution, and fee impact are all computed automatically from live market data.
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