Beyond the Growth-Value Divide: All-Weather Core QVML

For years, investors have found themselves caught in a relentless tug-of-war between high-flying growth stocks and the steady, albeit often overlooked, appeal of value investing.As recent market rotations have vividly demonstrated — with pure-value plays rapidly closing the performance gap against their growth counterparts — trying to perfectly time these shifts has become an exhausting, and often costly, guessing game.Key Takeaways: No More Market Timing: QVML combines quality, value, and momentum into one all-weather strategy. The 10% Cut: The fund simply drops the lowest-scoring 50 stocks in the S&P 500. Maintains Tech Upside: QVML retains market-cap weighting to keep top AI leaders like Nvidia. The macroeconomic landscape is shifting rapidly under the weight of changing interest rates, leaving heavily concentrated portfolios deeply vulnerable to sudden, unpredictable sector rotations. Instead of placing aggressive bets on which side of the growth-value divide will win the next quarter, investors are increasingly seeking a more robust, all-weather core for their equity allocations. One fund that could help investors in this predicament is the Invesco S&P 500 QVM Multi-factor ETF (QVML B+). QVML normally invests at least 90% of its total assets in common stocks that comprise the Index.Steady Performance and GrowthUnlike the concentrated Invesco pure-style funds that narrow their field’s down to 100 stocks, QVML’s approach involves casting a wider net. The fund assigns a composite score to S&P 500 stocks based on quality, value and momentum, while simply removing the bottom 10% (roughly 50 stocks). The fund, which has a 0.11% expense ratio, is up 13.49% year-to-date through September 18 and up 17% overall in 2026, according to data from VettaFi. It has also accumulated $1.82 billion in assets under management. Although QVML has had a strong 2026 so far, its performance in September has been weaker. The fund has slipped around 1–2% over the month, depending on the measurement date. It went from about $46.38 intraday on September 3 to $45.35 at the market closing of September 18. However, this recent drop in stock price doesn’t necessarily mean QVML’s strategy is not working. It’s more that after a strong run, the fund is moving with the same mega-cap/AI- heavy market forces that have been driving the S&P 500, while the value/momentum/quality screens determine which stocks get emphasized. Notably, the fund’s three-year correlation with the S&P 500 is typically tracking around 0.97 to 0.98. For the past five years, QVML maintained a return rate of 14.03% per year, compared to the Index’s 13.8% yearly return.Top HoldingsQVML’s top holdings give the fund a pretty meaningful connection to the biggest names driving the broader equity market. Nvidia is the largest position, at about 9.2% of its portfolio, followed by Apple at 8.7% and Microsoft at 6.9%. Alphabet, Amazon and Broadcom are also among its largest holdings. The fund and the Index are both rebalanced quarterly, in March, June, September and December. Together, the top 10 holdings account for roughly 45% of the fund. This means that, although QVML holds more than 400 stocks, what happens in a relatively small group of mega-cap companies can still heavily impact its performance. That exposure has helped QVML participate in the continued strength of AI and technology stocks. Nvidia, for example, has been one of the biggest contributors to the market’s AI trade, while Broadcom, Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon give the fund exposure to different parts of the AI and cloud infrastructure buildout. Micron and AMD also appear in the fund’s top 10 holdings. As of September 8, Micron was up more than 240% year-to-date, and AMD more than 135%, demonstrating how individual stocks with strong momentum can have a big impact on a factor strategy like QVML. For more news, information, and analysis, visit the Innovative ETFs Content Hub. Invesco Distributors, Inc. is an independent company unaffiliated with VettaFi LLC (“VettaFi”). These articles do not form any kind of legal partnership, agency affiliation, or similar relationship between VettaFi and Invesco Distributors, Inc., nor is such a relationship created or implied by the articles herein. VettaFi LLC is the author and owner of these articles.