RTH ETF gains 5.79% in 2026, outperforming XRT ETF down 6.25%, due to different retail sector bets.

The VanEck Retail ETF (RTH) is up 5.79% in 2026, driven by its focus on mega-cap retail giants like Amazon and Walmart, which dominate its market-cap weighted portfolio. In contrast, the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT), which equally weights about 75 retail names including smaller brick-and-mortar stores, is down 6.25%. RTH's performance benefits from Amazon's strong AWS growth and large market cap, making it a bet on digital retail platforms, while XRT reflects broader retail health with more exposure to specialty and discretionary retailers. Investors favoring concentrated digital retail exposure may prefer RTH, whereas those betting on a rebound in smaller retailers might choose XRT. The gap highlights how weighting and portfolio composition affect returns in the same sector.