BOXX vs SPTS

BOXXBAlpha Architect 1-3 Month Box ETF

SPTSAState Street SPDR Portfolio Short Term Treasury ETF

In short

BOXX A T-bill fund that owns no T-bills. BOXX builds its 1-3 month Treasury bill payoff out of exchange-listed box spread options, so the return shows up in the share price instead of a stream of interest payments.

SPTS U.S. Treasury notes maturing in one to three years, wrapped at three basis points. SPTS sits in the cheapest tier of the short-Treasury aisle, charging a fifth of the category median for the same plain-vanilla job.

Stated mandate

BOXX The fund seeks to match or exceed, before expenses, the price and yield performance of the 1–3 month segment of the U.S. Treasury bill market.

SPTS The fund seeks to track the price and yield performance of the Bloomberg 1-3 Year U.S. Treasury Index before fees and expenses, providing exposure to U.S. Treasury securities with remaining maturities between 1 and 3 years.

Why people hold it

• BOXX No bills in the box: the fund stacks long and short exchange-listed options (long call plus short put at one strike against the reverse at another) into a payoff that behaves like short-term fixed income.alphaarchitect.comalphaarchitect.com 2
• Nothing drips out along the way. A box spread throws off no coupon, so the fund has not been paying regular income distributions; the issuer frames it as an options-based alternative to an ultrashort bond position.alphaarchitect.com
• A multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively, and it has stuck closely to the 1-3 month bill market it benchmarks against, which puts it in the upper half of its short-Treasury peer group.

• SPTS Charges 0.03% a year against a 0.15% median for short-Treasury funds. On cash-like money, the fee line is the part that doesn't drift.
• Follows the Bloomberg 1-3 Year U.S. Treasury Index closely, one of the tightest index fits among its short-Treasury peers.ssga.com
• Roughly 100 U.S. Treasury notes and nothing else. No corporates, no mortgages, no credit surprises hiding in the basket. Distributions land monthly.
• Trading since 2011 and now a multi-billion-dollar, actively traded fund, so it isn't a thin newcomer you have to nurse in and out of.

Worth knowing

• BOXX You pay for the plumbing: 0.19% net of a waiver through February 1, 2027 (0.24% gross), near the category median but above plain bill trackers SPTS, SCHO and VGSH at 0.03%.etfarchitect.com
• The tax angle is not settled. The prospectus itself flags that the tax code offers no clear guidance for this strategy, so the treatment of gains could change or be challenged.etfarchitect.com
• Actively managed, not index-tracking: the payoff rests on the manager rolling box spreads in the listed options market rather than on a portfolio of Treasuries.alphaarchitect.com

• SPTS Short maturities dampen price swings, they don't erase them. When short-term rates move, the fund's price and its payouts move too.
• Government paper only, so there's no credit spread in the income. The yield is whatever the front end of the Treasury curve is paying.
• VGSH and SCHO match the 0.03% fee on the same slice of the curve. Cost alone won't separate them; execution and platform access will.

Full BOXX profile⁠

Full SPTS profile⁠