FSIG vs USIG

FSIGCFirst Trust Limited Duration Investment Grade Corporate ETF

USIGAiShares Broad USD Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF

In short

FSIG First Trust's short-end corporate bond fund: roughly 300 investment-grade credits, monthly income, and a mandate built around current income rather than an index. The trade-off is a 0.44% fee in a pennies-a-year category.

USIG Most investment-grade corporate bond funds hand you one slice of the maturity curve. USIG takes the whole thing, thousands of US dollar corporate bonds from short-dated to long, for four basis points a year.

Stated mandate

FSIG The Fund seeks current income by investing at least 80% of its net assets in investment-grade corporate debt securities under normal market conditions.

USIG The fund seeks to track an index of U.S. dollar-denominated investment-grade corporate bonds.

Why people hold it

• FSIG Limited duration by design: shorter-maturity corporate paper mechanically swings less on a given move in rates than long bonds do.
• At least 80% of net assets sit in investment-grade corporate debt, spread across roughly 300 positions, so no single borrower drives the outcome.
• The objective is written around income, not index replication, so the managers pick issuers and maturities instead of copying a benchmark.
• Income arrives monthly, and the fund has grown past the billion-dollar mark since its 2021 launch.

• USIG Costs 0.04% a year, against a category median near 0.19%. CORP, which tracks the same ICE BofA US Corporate Index, charges 0.41%.
• One ticker, the full USD investment-grade corporate curve: thousands of bonds, short to long. Slice funds like IGSB (1-5 year) and IGIB (5-10 year) each cover one segment.ishares.com
• Running since 2007, it has tracked its index with very little drift and is one of the more actively traded funds in its category.
• Interest lands monthly, and this is a multi-billion-dollar fund that ranks among the strongest implementations in its peer group.

Worth knowing

• FSIG Costs 0.44% a year against a 0.19% category median, while index rivals like VCIT and IGSB run 0.03% to 0.04%.
• Corporate credit, not Treasuries: prices move with issuer creditworthiness as well as with interest rates.
• Trading is moderate rather than heavy, so bid-ask spreads can widen when markets get jumpy.

• USIG Owning the whole curve means long-dated bonds ride along, so the price swings more when rates move than a short-maturity slice such as IGSB.
• This is corporate credit, not Treasuries. Investment grade at purchase, but prices can fall when spreads widen or an issuer is downgraded.ishares.com
• VCIT edges it on fee at 0.03%, though that fund stays in intermediate maturities rather than the full curve.

Full FSIG profile⁠

Full USIG profile⁠