FSTB vs SCHJ

FSTB—Fidelity Short-Term Bond ETF

SCHJASchwab 1-5 Year Corporate Bond ETF

In short

FSTB New wrapper, seasoned engine: FSTB is the exchange-traded share class of Fidelity's long-running Short-Term Bond Fund, holding mostly investment-grade debt of all types. That discretion costs more than the index crowd charges.

SCHJ Short-dated corporate credit at index-fund pricing. SCHJ tracks the Bloomberg US 1-5 Year Corporate Bond Index for 0.03% a year, sits at the bottom of its category's fee table, and pays monthly.

Stated mandate

FSTB The fund seeks high current income while preserving capital. It normally invests at least 80% of assets in investment-grade debt securities and related repurchase agreements.

SCHJ The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the total return of an index measuring the short-term U.S. corporate bond market.

Why people hold it

• FSTB Not a fresh start in disguise: the ETF is a share class of Fidelity's existing Short-Term Bond Fund, so it plugs into a portfolio and team that predate the 2026 listing.fidelity.comsec.gov
• Broad mandate: normally 80%+ in investment-grade debt of all types plus repurchase agreements, seeking income while preserving capital, rather than tracking one corporate-bond index.fidelity.com
• Short-maturity by design, which mechanically dampens price swings from rate moves compared with longer-dated bond funds.fidelity.com

• SCHJ 0.03% a year, against a 0.19% median for investment-grade corporate ETFs. No peer in the cohort charges less.
• Thousands of individual bonds in the basket, so no single issuer's trouble moves the fund much.
• The 1-5 year maturity ceiling means less price swing per move in rates than intermediate corporate funds like VCIT or IGIB, which sit further out the curve.
• Interest is passed through monthly rather than quarterly, and the fund ranks in the top quartile of its investment-grade corporate peer group overall.

Worth knowing

• FSTB At 0.21% a year it costs more than the short-corporate index heavyweights (VCSH and SCHJ at 0.03%, IGSB and SPSB at 0.04%) and more than the peer-group median.
• Our review puts it in the bottom quartile of a crowded short-term investment-grade field, mostly on cost and how it measures up against cheap index trackers.
• The ETF class listed in 2026, so its on-exchange history is short, trading is only moderate, and income arrives quarterly rather than monthly.

• SCHJ This is company debt, not Treasuries. Downgrades and defaults are part of the deal, and short maturities shrink that risk without erasing it.
• A mid-size fund with moderate trading volume, so spreads can run wider than at the category's giants. Limit orders matter more here.
• Launched in 2019, so its record is shorter than rivals that traded through earlier credit cycles.

Full FSTB profile⁠

Full SCHJ profile⁠