BENJ vs OVT

BENJAHorizon Landmark ETF

OVTCOverlay Shares Short Term Bond ETF

In short

BENJ Most option-income Treasury funds sell calls against long bonds. BENJ flips it: hold one- to three-month T-bills as ballast, then run an actively managed options book on US stocks, ETFs and indexes.

OVT Where its peer group writes calls on Treasuries, OVT flips the trade: a short-maturity investment-grade bond core with S&P 500 put spreads sold on top. The income comes from equity volatility, not from the bonds. 0.79% a year.

Stated mandate

BENJ The Fund seeks total return through active management, investing primarily in one- to three-month U.S. Treasury bills and related ETFs while using options strategies on a broad range of domestic equity securities, ETFs, and equity indices.

OVT The fund seeks total return through short-term, investment-grade, U.S.-dollar-denominated, fixed-rate taxable bonds with a dollar-weighted average maturity of no more than three years and a maximum maturity of five years. It also sells and buys short-term put options to generate income.

Why people hold it

• BENJ Costs 0.40%, under the 0.58% median for its option-income Treasury cohort and well below OVT at 0.80%.
• The bond sleeve is one- to three-month T-bills, so there is no 20+ year duration bet built in the way there is with long-bond buy-write peers like TLTW and TLTI.
• Fully active, not rule-locked: the manager can write options across single stocks, ETFs and equity indexes rather than one fixed index overlay.
• Sits in the upper half of a small, crowded peer group of Treasury-plus-options funds.

• OVT Put spreads, not covered calls. It sells index puts and buys lower-strike puts, so the bond sleeve's own upside stays unsold and the long leg bounds the loss on each spread.lsfunds.com
• The income engine sits apart from the bonds: collateral is short-term investment-grade corporate debt, average maturity under three years, nothing longer than five.
• Runs the mandate as written, with bond exposure held through ETFs rather than rebuilt bond by bond. Lands in the upper half of a small peer group.lsfunds.com
• Live since 2021, so the put-spread approach has run through a full rate cycle inside a real fund, not a backtest.

Worth knowing

• BENJ Launched in 2025, so the track record is short and there is not much history yet to judge how the options book behaves across different markets.
• Thinly traded, which can mean wider bid-ask spreads than the expense ratio alone suggests.
• Built for total return, not a set payout calendar. It has not run on the monthly-distribution cadence common elsewhere in option-income land.

• OVT Costs 0.79% with no waiver, above the category median. Treasury-overlay peers run their option income cheaper: TLTW at 0.35%, TLTX at 0.29%.
• Equity risk inside a bond wrapper. Short put notional can reach 100% of net assets; a fast S&P 500 drop costs money, and the long puts limit that loss without removing it.lsfunds.comlsfunds.com 2
• Premium income varies, so payouts are irregular, and it is one of the less-traded funds in its category.

Full BENJ profile⁠

Full OVT profile⁠