BNDS vs HYLB

BNDSDInfrastructure Capital Bond Income ETF

HYLBAXtrackers USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF

In short

BNDS Most high yield bond ETFs track an index for pennies. BNDS goes the other way: active picks in undervalued corporate bonds, a preferred stock sleeve, and covered calls written on liquid bond ETFs, paid out monthly, for 0.88%.

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

BNDS The Fund seeks to maximize current income while also pursuing opportunities for capital appreciation.

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

• BNDS The real differentiator: BNDS buys liquid bond ETFs with established options markets and writes covered calls on them, turning volatility into a second income stream alongside coupons.infracapfunds.comsec.gov
• Unconstrained by design: at least 80% in fixed income with an emphasis on corporates, but free to roam municipals, governments, credit qualities and maturities.
• Current income is the stated first objective, capital appreciation the second, and the cash goes out monthly rather than quarterly.
• Run by InfraCap founder Jay Hatfield, who also manages the firm's preferred stock and MLP income funds and has spent close to three decades in credit and income investing.infracapfunds.combusinesswire.com

• 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

• BNDS At 0.88% with no waiver trimming it, the fee sits above the category median and well above index trackers like SCYB at 0.03% or USHY at 0.08% doing the plain vanilla job.
• Covered calls cap how far the positions they are written against can run, and the fund uses a modest amount of leverage, which magnifies moves in both directions.infracapfunds.comsec.gov
• Launched in January 2025, so the track record is short, and it trades lighter than the category's index giants, which can mean wider bid-ask spreads at the moment of trade.

• 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 BNDS profile⁠

Full HYLB profile⁠