SCHD is the fund people buy so they can stop watching the market. This year it was the one worth watching. SCHD, Schwab’s dividend ETF, has returned 34% with dividends since the end of 2025, three times SPY’s 11%.
The rise has a cost for anyone buying now. SCHD’s price ran well ahead of its earnings, its P/E sits near the top of its own history, and the yield that draws people to the fund has shrunk.
What carried SCHD
SCHD follows the Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100 Index, which picks about a hundred high-yielding US companies with a long record of paying dividends and strong finances. That rule fills the fund with steady businesses: consumer staples, health care and energy make up 55% of it.
This year the mix paid. Energy stocks surged, and XLE, the biggest energy ETF, is up 53%. Chevron and ConocoPhillips sit among SCHD’s ten largest holdings, next to Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Texas Instruments. Broader dividend ETFs rose far less: VYM is up 16% and DGRO, the dividend growth ETF, 19%.
The price ran ahead of earnings
Earnings grew, just more slowly. The companies inside SCHD lifted their earnings about 15% this year, while the price rose about twice as much.
Investors paid more for each dollar of those earnings, and the gap went into the multiple. SCHD’s trailing P/E climbed from 17.0x at the end of 2025 to 19.4x.
The highest price tag since 2021
A multiple near 19x would look modest on the S&P 500. On SCHD it stands out. Since 2017, SCHD has been cheaper than today in four months out of five, and its usual P/E in that time is 16.9x.
SCHD has been here before. Its P/E peaked at 22.4x in January 2018 and topped 20x in early 2021, then slid for two years. This February it reached 20.1x, its highest since then.
Other dividend ETFs sit in the same corner. DGRO, HDV and VYM all trade near the top of their own P/E history. Their multiples were already that high when the year began; SCHD got there in ten months.
The S&P 500 went the other way. Its earnings grew faster than its price, and SPY’s P/E fell from 28.0x to 23.4x this year, almost exactly its median since 2017.
What it means for income
For a dividend fund, a higher multiple shows up as a lower yield. SCHD’s dividend per share is about 2% higher than at the end of 2025, while its price rose far faster. The yield over the past twelve months fell from 3.7% to 2.9%.
In dollars, $10,000 put into SCHD at the start of the year bought about $375 a year in dividends at that yield. The same $10,000 today buys about $293.
The fund still holds what its buyers came for: established companies that pay dividends and grew their earnings this year. What a buyer takes on now is a price that leans on that growth continuing. A sixth of SCHD is energy, and energy earnings rise and fall with the price of oil.
This year SCHD paid its holders in price. From here it has to pay them in earnings.
See the full breakdown on ETF Copilot: etf-copilot.com/go/substack/schd-more-expensive
Written by the ETF Copilot research team. Data as of 2 November 2026. This is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. ETF Copilot receives no compensation from the issuers of the funds mentioned. Managers of ETF Copilot may or may not hold positions in the funds mentioned.
Sources: Schwab Asset Management, SCHD fund page (holdings as of 2 November 2026); S&P Dow Jones Indices, Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100 Index.