BKHY vs HYLB

BKHYABNY Mellon High Yield ETF

HYLBAXtrackers USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF

In short

BKHY Junk bonds, whole hog. BKHY mirrors the Bloomberg index that defines the US high yield market, roughly 1,600 issues deep, for 0.22% a year. A broad, low-fee tracker that happens to be one of the smaller names on the shelf.

HYLB Broad-market junk bonds at index-fund pricing: 0.05% a year, a fraction of what the typical high-yield bond ETF charges, spread across roughly 1,300 issues. Running since 2016, it pays monthly.

Stated mandate

BKHY The fund uses a rules-based, systematic strategy to track a high-yield bond index. It normally invests at least 80% of its assets in bonds from that index, while similar derivatives may also be used.

HYLB The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the Solactive USD High Yield Corporates Total Market Index. It uses a passive representative-sampling indexing approach.

Why people hold it

• BKHY Charges 0.22% a year, comfortably below the typical fee in the high yield ETF crowd.
• Holds roughly 1,600 bonds against the Bloomberg US Corporate High Yield Total Return Index, the market's standard benchmark, not a trimmed liquid subset of it.
• Rules-based by prospectus: at least 80% of assets in index bonds. It has hugged that benchmark about as closely as anything in its peer group.
• Distributions come monthly, not quarterly.

• HYLB 0.05% expense ratio puts it at the low end of the high-yield ETF field, matching SPHY and undercutting USHY's 0.08%. Fee drag matters most where yield is the whole point.
• Total-market mandate, not a filtered slice: roughly 1,300 bonds sampled from the Solactive USD High Yield Corporates Total Market Index.
• Tracking has been tight against its stated index, and it trades actively enough to keep spreads workable. One of the cleaner implementations in the high-yield group.
• Monthly distributions, with a live record going back to a 2016 launch (through the 2020 credit shock and the 2022 rate spike).

Worth knowing

• BKHY It trades thinly and runs small, so spreads can be wider and big orders can push the price more than in the category's heavyweights.
• SCYB tracks the same high yield index for a fraction of the fee, and SPHY and USHY sit in single-digit basis points too.
• High yield means below-investment-grade credit. This portfolio reacts to default worries and spread swings, not just interest rates.

• HYLB This is the credit-risk end of the bond market. Below-investment-grade issuers default more often, and prices can fall hard when spreads widen.
• Representative sampling means it holds a subset of the index, not every bond, so results can drift slightly from the benchmark.
• Cheap, but not the floor: SCYB runs 0.03%. HYLB is also a mid-sized fund next to the largest names in the category.

Full BKHY profile⁠

Full HYLB profile⁠