XLRE — XLRE | S&P 500 Real Estate Sector ETF 13F holdings and portfolio analysis

Directly following the baseline means accepting a concentrated REIT-heavy portfolio with weak benchmark-relative performance. The baseline top 10 holdings account for 58.62% of assets, top 20 reach 85.98%, and sector exposure is effectively all Real Estate in the strategy view. The largest positions are WELL at 10.04%, PLD at 9.34%, and AMT at 6.48%. In return terms, the baseline delivered 3.32% annualized return and 38.1% total return, but alpha was -6.27 and max drawdown reached -38.51%, so the investor gets a high-conviction real estate sleeve rather than a diversified market-like portfolio.

The recent baseline periods show a pattern of occasional downside protection followed by repeated relative lag. The clearest positive stretch was 2025-01-31, when the portfolio returned 3.27% versus SPY at -2.79%, for +6.06% excess. But several later periods reversed that advantage: 2025-04-30 posted 0.85% versus SPY’s 6.28% (-5.43% excess), 2025-05-31 was -1.19% versus 3.75% (-4.94%), and 2025-09-30 was -3.11% versus 2.05% (-5.16%). Those swings help explain why beta stayed lower at 0.81, yet long-run alpha remained -6.27 and the Sharpe ratio stayed weak at 0.26.

The next thing to inspect is whether the real estate concentration is worth the weak risk-adjusted record. The baseline already shows enough evidence to focus the review: top 10 concentration is 58.62%, Real Estate sector weight is 100.02% in the strategy view, annualized return is 3.32%, Sharpe is 0.26, and max drawdown is -38.51%. It is also useful to inspect implementation drag because the backtest logged 3,597 trades and 0.567 total estimated cost. Before accepting the baseline, a user should verify whether the biggest names like WELL, PLD, AMT, EQIX, and SPG are diversified enough across REIT subsectors to justify those drawdown and alpha numbers.