DYLD vs USHY

DYLDDLeaderShares Dynamic Yield ETF

USHYAiShares Broad USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF

In short

DYLD A go-anywhere income fund in a corner of the market ruled by index trackers. No benchmark to hug: the manager can move across corporate bonds, bank loans, securitized paper and sovereigns in pursuit of current income, and pays monthly.

USHY The wide-angle lens on junk bonds: about 1,900 US dollar high yield corporate issues for 0.08% a year, a fifth of what the typical fund in its category charges. Broad, cheap, heavily traded, and it pays monthly.

Stated mandate

DYLD The Fund seeks current income.

USHY The fund seeks to track an index of U.S. dollar-denominated high yield corporate bonds.

Why people hold it

• DYLD No index to hug. The mandate lets it roam corporate bonds, Treasuries and agencies, bank loans, convertibles, asset-backed and mortgage-backed paper, foreign sovereigns and private debt.sec.govsec.gov 2
• One job, stated plainly: current income. Net investment income goes out monthly, with realized capital gains typically distributed once a year in December.
• At least 80% of assets stay in a diversified pool of fixed income instruments, so the flexibility works inside a defined bond sandbox rather than drifting somewhere else entirely.sec.gov
• Ordinary 1940 Act fund structure: exchange-traded shares, 1099 tax reporting rather than a K-1.

• USHY Charges 0.08% a year while the median high yield fund in its cohort runs 0.40%. Cheap rent on an expensive-to-run corner of the bond market.
• Holds about 1,900 bonds against the ICE BofA US High Yield Constrained Index: the broad market, not a curated slice of the most liquid names.ishares.com
• A multi-billion-dollar fund and one of the more actively traded in high yield, which tends to keep bid-ask spreads thin even on busy days.
• Pays monthly and has tracked its index tightly since its 2017 launch, one of the closer index matches in its peer group.

Worth knowing

• DYLD 0.75% a year is the toll for the active mandate. The index-tracking core bond funds at the top of this group, BND and SPAB among them, charge a small fraction of that.
• Small asset base and thin trading, so spreads can run wider than in the giant core bond ETFs. Order size and timing matter more here.
• In a crowded aggregate-bond field, it sits in the lower ranks, where cheap, broad index trackers set the bar.

• USHY High yield means below-investment-grade borrowers. When credit gets stressed this asset class drops with stocks instead of cushioning them.
• Cheaper tickets sit on the same shelf: SCYB at 0.03% and SPHY at 0.05%.
• This is a fund, not a bond ladder. No maturity date hands your principal back; the basket rolls on indefinitely.

Full DYLD profile⁠

Full USHY profile⁠