COWZ ETF Gains 14.81% in a Year With No Apple in Portfolio

The Pacer US Cash Cows 100 ETF, trading under the ticker COWZ on the CBOE, has delivered a standout 14.81% return over the past year through July 6 — and done it without owning a single share of Apple. The fund is also up 6.4% year to date in 2026, outpacing many mainstream index products while conspicuously excluding one of the market's most celebrated profit machines.

The apparent contradiction raises a legitimate question for investors: how does a fund explicitly designed to hold America's top cash-generating companies pass on Apple, which routinely posts tens of billions in free cash flow each quarter? The answer lies in the ETF's methodology — COWZ screens for free cash flow yield, meaning it favors companies whose cash generation is large relative to their share price. Apple's enormous market capitalization dilutes its yield even as its absolute cash flows remain massive, effectively disqualifying it by the fund's own rules.

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That disciplined, valuation-aware approach gives COWZ a fundamentally different character than market-cap-weighted funds where Apple carries outsized influence. By anchoring to yield rather than size, the ETF naturally gravitates toward less-hyped corners of the market where cash flows are rich but valuations remain reasonable — a posture that has clearly rewarded shareholders over the past twelve months.

For investors frustrated by concentration risk in mega-cap tech-heavy portfolios, COWZ's performance offers analytical evidence that diversification away from the largest household names need not come at the cost of returns. The fund's results suggest that rigorous cash flow discipline, applied consistently, can compete with — and in recent periods beat — strategies built around the market's most dominant brand names.

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